


heartache's guide to the american northeast

by fruitelves



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alcohol, Almost sexual content, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Coming Out, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Indie Music, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Musicians, New Jersey AU, POV Sylvain Jose Gautier, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Road Trips, Secret Relationship, Sylvix Big Bang (Fire Emblem), Tour Bus, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius, thats it for them, the following applies to sylvain and hilda:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:47:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25980835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitelves/pseuds/fruitelves
Summary: After months of waiting and planning and practice, Jersey-based indie band MIDKNIGHT has finally arrived at possibly their biggest milestone yet: their first tour, which will take them across five states to seven cities in eleven days. Everyone is certain it should be the best days of their lives.Except Sylvain, who knows nothing is ever that simple, knows he'll screw it up somehow.They should really listen to him more.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, HildaVain are Friends with Benefits, Sylvain Jose Gautier & Hilda Valentine Goneril, very minor Dedueashe
Comments: 18
Kudos: 53
Collections: Sylvix Big Bang





	heartache's guide to the american northeast

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, wow wow, do i have a lot to say! This fic has been such a labor of love and to see it finally come to a close and get to post it is so amazing :') This is my first big bang and it has been a lot of fun! I put so much of myself into this story and I hope everyone enjoys reading as much as i loved writing it.
> 
> disclaimers:  
> 1.please don't be wary of the Hildavain content, this is still very much a Sylvix fic! Hilda is a major part of the ride but the happy ending is still Sylvain and Felix's 100%.  
> 2\. I know very little about being an indie musician and touring, so not everything will be perfectly realistic lol
> 
> I want to give a shoutout to the artist I was paired with, on twitter @creslightning created a beautiful piece for this fic, go check it out!
> 
> And another shoutout to my very good friend and writing inspiration/ally Clém (ao3 thx4thevenombby) for not only helping me with every single step of this fic and being so supportive, but for being the beta reader and putting up with all my crazy directions and weird whims. 
> 
> One last thing: there is a playlist for this fic! I tried to capture the sound the band is described as having so you can feel like you're listening to them too. Some of the songs are only for that purpose, but some songs are there because they reminded me of the actual story and emotion of the story (and some are both!). It can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/ukrainianprez/playlist/22T39dzn6UCMBvnaLtYUlP?si=vw-l9mSYQo6IQtrGpeGHQg)  
> and I recommend listening to it while you read if you like folk punk or pop punk. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate comments more than anything <3

Sylvain could always tell when summer started to close its curtains by watching the way the sun fell through his shoddy blinds onto the obviously-not-real-wood floors of his apartment. Now, at a quarter past seven, the threat of sunset hung heavy, and glaring orange rays pierced the air in his occupied bedroom. He watched, eyes half-narrowed, as Hilda swiftly and wordlessly removed herself from his side, slunk off the edge of his bed, and leaned over to pick her clothes off of his floor, with her back, pale and glowing with sweat, facing him all the while. 

“Sorry again for inviting myself over,” she teased, pressing the side of her face into her shoulder and tossing her now-disheveled hair around the other. 

“It’s fine,” Sylvain replied, not breaking eye contact with her back, even as she masterfully clipped her bra back in place (seriously, he would never know how people did that). Hilda did have a habit of showing up uninvited at his door, or calling to ask if he was free when she was already in the parking lot, but he didn’t usually mind. He rarely had anything better to do than… well, her. “We always have a good time, don’t we? Sorry we can’t hang out longer, the gang really wants to practice tonight.” 

“S’alright.” She turned around, pulling her crop top over the mesh undershirt he imagined was smothering her in her own body heat. “I guess this will be the last time I see you for a little bit, though.” 

“What? Why?” Sylvain asked, apparently losing all sense of purpose, time, and place in the humidity. 

“You guys’ tour starts tomorrow, no?” 

Oh. Yeah. “Oh, I- yeah. Wow. We’ve been anticipating it for so long, it’s kind of hard to believe it’s actually happening.” The tour, which was undeserving of such a grandiose title as a tour, as it was really just over a weeks’ worth of travel to hit a couple trashy venues in not-too-distant cities, had been in the works since they'd started work on their latest album, so about five months now. More like a few years, if all the time they had spent daydreaming out about big success since the dawn of the band was included, or maybe even longer if the daydreams in Sylvain’s head counted too. 

“Proud of you guys. I think you’re gonna blow up even bigger after this.” Hilda liked to act like she was one of their biggest fans, but Sylvain wasn’t sure she had even listened to their second album yet. 

“Unlikely. It’s not like we’re opening for a bigger act or anything,” which would have been a smarter move than headlining for their first tour ever, Sylvain was pretty sure of, “so it’s just going to be people who already like us and maybe like ten people who thought we were gonna be that electro-swing act from Connecticut I always see on Twitter.” It was harder than it should have been to come up with a truly original band name.

“Well in any case, I know you’re gonna crush it,” Hilda purred, leaning over and putting her socks on, “I hope you guys have the time of your lives on the road,” she continued, pulling on her pink-laced platform boots, “and don’t fuck anyone else or I’ll murder you.”

Sylvain stayed quiet as Hilda stared at him with her lips pursed, before she laughed. “I’m just kidding. I don’t care. But use a condom because I don’t want to.”

“Hilda, I-” she interrupted his thought by leaning over next to the bed and kissing him between the eyes, a gesture of affection she loved to employ to blur the line their relationship toed between romantic and platonic. She turned away, the ends of her hair brushing his shoulder as she headed towards the door. Sylvain’s stomach turned over on itself as he watched her leave.

“See you later, Sly.”

“Wait, Hilda.” 

“Hm?”

“I, uh-” _Say something._ “Um, do you wanna come with us?” Once he asked, it was too late to go back, too late to think through the implications, the possible consequences of asking that. Was that a weird thing to ask? Was it even his place to invite her? Did he really want to-

“Really?” Hilda asked, her hands clasped together excitedly under her chin. “I would love to. Are you sure?”

 _It’s too late to turn back now._ “Yeah, of course. You’re so important to the band, designing our merch and everything, it wouldn’t feel right to just leave you behind. We’d miss you.” Meaning, Sylvain would miss her, meaning, Sylvain has gotten too used to Hilda’s attention that he needs her around, meaning, Sylvain is a fucking asshole. “Go home and pack, I’ll pick you up at uh, seven-thirty tomorrow.”

“Oh, this is gonna be so fun!” Hilda cooed, doing a little hop-dance that made her look like a little kid. “Oh, but I have to call out of work for, like, two weeks… y’know what, I’ll just quit. Bye-bye!” And she shut the door without another word. 

Sylvain buried his head in the pillow smeared with her makeup and thought about what an idiot he was. 

Sylvain pulled up to Felix’s house for their last practice before the tour with his heart beating so erratically fast he questioned if he should have kept heading toward the exit for the hospital. Sure, all his friends liked Hilda well enough, especially Annette, but they didn’t sign up for two weeks with her, especially not the most stressful and important two weeks of their lives so far. 

Also, there was the whole “Hilda and Sylvain have been having regular sex for going on four months now and nobody else has a goddamn clue” aspect of it all. There wasn’t really an exact reason they decided to keep it quiet, but they didn’t tell anyone for the first month because there was nothing to tell (it was just sex), and then it went on for so long that telling them now would seem like they had been lying. They had stumbled into this affair in late April; it was now mid-August. He assumed it would fizzle out soon enough, maybe by the end of summer (a deadline which was rapidly approaching), and he would never have to tell anyone, until it was no longer a secret and was just a funny story from his twenties. 

Sylvain saw two ways this could go; either Hilda comes and something goes horribly wrong and what was supposed to be the best time of their lives blows up in their faces, or someone puts their foot down about it and he has to break Hilda’s heart and she never talks to any of them again. Either way, Sylvain ruins everything. Again. 

As usual, the garage was wide open, the door to the kitchen unlocked, and Felix’s swarm of black cats ready to mark Sylvain’s ankles as their territory. He heard crashing sounds as loud as a jet engine, coming from the basement, where he descended the stairs and found himself staring at Mercedes, sitting at Dedue’s drum kit, wielding a pair of drumsticks like a pair of throwing knives. Being the first to notice his arrival, she lowered her arms back to her sides as her face lit up. 

“And that makes all of us!” she chirped, alerting Sylvain to the fact that he was once again the last one to arrive. Everyone else in the room greeted him in turn, in the ways they always did, like the way Annette always pulled him down for a hug. 

Sylvain put his guitar case down and sat in one of the dozen mismatched folding chairs that constantly moved around the basement. To his left was Felix, holding a beer, an impatient look on his face. “Sorry for being late, I was…” _with Hilda._ “Taking a nap.” When was the last time Sylvain took a nap?

“It’s fine, dude, I just got here myself,” said Ingrid, whose bass was still in its case at her feet. 

“We were just talking about some last-minute tour stuff,” said Dimitri, who stood behind Mercedes, his guitar already over his shoulder. 

“Like what?” asked Sylvain.

“Dimitri doesn’t think knowing where we’re going to sleep on the road is important and refuses to discuss it,” said Ashe, to Sylvain’s right, already wearing one of the hoodies Hilda had designed for them to sell on the tour. Ashe and Mercedes, though they didn’t play music, were just as much a part of MIDKNIGHT as the ones with instruments- the two of them were often the only ones to handle or even remember things like schedules or basic nutrition when the rest of them were deep in writing, recording, or practicing the music itself. Ashe also ran their merch table during shows while Mercedes handled conflicts with venues or lyrics or Annette’s dad. 

“I didn’t say it’s not important, Ashe, just that you don’t have to worry about it.” Dimitri sounded overconfident but seemed to have nobody convinced, as usual. 

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You don’t have to worry about what it means.”

“Can we not do this again?” Dedue pleaded, approaching his drums and taking the drumsticks from Mercedes, who got up to let him sit. “I would really like to play.” 

“Thank you, Dedue,” said Felix, picking up his violin and moving to the portion of the basement they designated for practice, where the instruments they had spent their lives' savings on sat plugged into speakers and amps they had bought for as cheap as possible off Craigslist. “I’ve been dying to play all day.” 

“Ready when you are,” said Annette, adjusting her microphone and stretching in place at the seat of her keyboard. “Are we just running through the setlist?”

“Makes the most sense to me.” Felix tied his hair back and raised his violin to playing position, smiling. Felix was happiest with his violin under his chin. 

Sylvain got his guitar set up and without another word the six of them tore into the first song on the setlist they’d planned for the tour, or at least for the first night if they felt like changing it. It was the opening song to their second album, a high-energy, incredibly loud song that made heavy use of the violin. It had grown within the last few weeks of the album being out to be one of Sylvain’s favorite they had ever released, partially because the excitement that came with its place in the set and its impassioned lyrics still affected him each time they played it, and partially because Felix shone so brightly each time they played it. They were all musicians, but Felix was a prodigy, and it was sometimes easy to forget when his strings were drowned out by Sylvain’s voice or a bassline. 

Each song was over before Sylvain knew it- the lyrics, the way the music caught in his throat, the movement of his hands across the neck of his guitar- they had all become second nature to him. Each time he played, he became more and more confident that he could now play their albums in his sleep, especially their first, the one that had taken so long to come together and spent so much time as their only material. Sylvain would never admit it, but he often felt undeserving of the band’s newfound success and his part in it; four years ago, he wasn’t even aware that he could sing, and now hours of his voice were online (and even in a few shops) to be listened to, downloaded, bought and dissected and reviewed and critiqued. It was all so disorienting. At times it felt like a prank, or a dream, or a test of Sylvain’s humility, another of which he failed. 

But the music was good. The music was real- not more real than other music, but more real than anything Sylvain had ventured to do in the last twenty-three years. People (coworkers, friends, music bloggers, rude commenters) liked to ask what genre MIDKNIGHT considered itself to be. Very rarely did these people get a straight answer from the band, but sometimes the askers would try to answer the question themselves. They had been called a lot of things- often indie rock, folk punk, basement pop, pop punk, any combination of the words most commonly found in a teenager’s favorite music magazine from 2007. Sylvain suspected it was Felix that made their sound so hard to place. Violin is not in the pop punk handbook. 

But still, as long as their songs were falling on the right ears, the drawer their CDs were put in at the record store didn’t really matter to them. It was enough for them to exist, for them to perform them together, for people to actually listen to the patchwork quilt of musical influence they sewed together and called a style. Usually they just went with ‘indie rock’ and called it a day. It was technically true. 

The final song on the list, their big closer, was one of the few Sylvain still had difficulty performing. It was a duet between he and Annette, five minutes of rising emotion with heavy backing guitar and lyrics inspired by every trauma and fuck-up the six of them had ever faced combined. It was the one song they’d released in the time between their first and second album, meaning they had never performed it before and were pretty sure a lot of people didn’t even know about it. Maybe a bad choice for a closer, but nothing else would feel right. The difficulty in performing it came out of the strenuous vocals and importance of keeping in time and harmony with Annette, who stood up from her keyboard to sing alongside him in this song as well as a few others. At each rehearsal, the two of them always ended up facing each other, practically singing to each other as they sang by the end of the song, as if it was a scripted move for the cameras, but it was really just the magnetic energy of the song. 

Annette adjusted her bun and took a long drink from the canister of iced tea she always carried with her. “I think that was our best session yet,” she said, poking Sylvain on the shoulder as he pulled his hair away from his face and took his guitar off his shoulder. “You really gave it your all, dude.” Annette’s praise meant more to Sylvain than pretty much any album review.

“That was totally awesome, seriously.” Dimitri came up behind Sylvain and slapped him on the back, then put both his arms around Sylvain, Felix, and Annette. “I’m so proud of you guys.” Felix stepped out from under Dimitri’s arm and began to put away his violin so carefully it was like he was holding a newborn. 

Ashe got up from his seat where he had been watching in undeserved awe. “That kicked ass. I could not be more excited for the shows.” Sylvain sometimes wondered how Ashe seemed to have more enthusiasm for their performances than the band did. They had even offered to have him practice with them and see if he had anything he could bring into the band as a member, but he declined. He liked being their roadie and merch seller even though both gigs were largely thankless. It was ineffable to Sylvain, but he appreciated Ashe’s loyalty regardless. 

After they had taken apart their set, they sat back down in the folding chairs, each with a beer or lemonade. The energy in the room was palpable, each of them buzzing with anticipation knowing that the next time they would perform, it would be on a stage in Brooklyn. In less than twenty four hours. 

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Dimitri said, perking up. “Plans for tomorrow morning have changed. We’re not all meeting here anymore, I’m gonna pick you all up around eight, so be ready at your own places.”

“We can’t all fit in one car, how’s that going to work?” asked Ingrid, echoing the thoughts of everyone in the room.

“You’ll see tomorrow. I’ve got it all figured out, don’t worry.”

“You keep saying that about the sleeping situation, too. What the hell are you planning, Dimitri?” Ashe asked, laughing as if he knew Dimitri wouldn’t lead them without reason, without having everything perfectly laid out. 

“Only the best trip of our lives with the best people I know.” Dimitri raised his glass as if to toast. 

Sylvain shifted nervously in his seat. He had to tell them about Hilda coming now. “Uh, speaking of which, guys, I need to… I may have, um…” All words failed him. This wasn’t even that big of a deal; it was just a ridiculously Sylvain-ian situation. 

Dedue glanced at Sylvain with a look of both concern and suspicion. “You okay, Sylvain? You can tell us whatever it is.” 

“I, uh. Was on the phone with Hilda-” they had no real reason to be together in person today that the rest of the group could know about- “and I may have invited her to come on the road with us. I really shouldn’t have done that without asking you guys first and I’m sorry, I messed up and I get it if you’re mad-”

“That’s totally fine, Sylvain.” Mercedes seemed completely unbothered. As did everyone else in the room, most of whom just shrugged. Sylvain took a deep breath and felt like a weight had been lifted. So they weren’t mad. That didn’t eliminate the possibility of something going wrong later, but for now, they weren’t mad. And he wouldn’t have to let Hilda down.

Annette nodded vigorously. “Yeah, are you kidding? I love that girl. We’re literally all friends with her, why would we be mad? I just hope there’s room for her.” 

“There will be plenty of room,” Dimitri added smugly.

Ingrid leaned forward in her seat with her head in her hands and scoffed. “Dimitri, I swear if you don’t stop with all this cryptic bullshit-”

“Hey.” Felix suddenly cut through the silence. “I also have something to tell you guys. And… it’s worse.” The look on his face spelled trouble. Bad news. Felix never had a look like that in his eyes, one so fearful, like a prey animal. It was unnatural. Sylvain felt a well in his chest open and water flood in.

“What’s the matter, Fe? Are you okay?” He couldn’t help but ask. 

“Uh, I’m- I’m fine. But, after the tour, like, the day after we get home. I’m leaving town.”

“What?” Sylvain practically yelled. The energy in the room turned cold. 

Felix shrunk in his seat. “My dad and I are moving to Boston. His job. We were supposed to have left already but I insisted I be there for the whole tour instead of… y’know just the Boston date.” 

Felix and Sylvain had lived within a fifteen minute drive from each other their entire lives; even before they had met in elementary school, they had been only two left turns apart. It was inconceivable to Sylvain that they could ever be apart. Boston was five hours away. 

Sylvain had nothing to say. He just sat and stared at Felix, and Felix stared back at him, looking more apologetic than Sylvain had seen him look in over a decade. 

“Wow.” Mercedes had approximately three million different ways to say “wow”, each with its own emotional flavor. 

“That sucks, Felix.” Ingrid, who had also lived within a few streets’ radius from Sylvain and Felix their entire lives (and even lived with Sylvain for a short time when they were little), leaned forward in her chair and put her hand on Felix’s knee, looking close to tears. “What are you feeling about this?”

“I’m...not thrilled?” Felix shrugged. “But…there are some really great music conservatories in Boston. I think I have a good chance at getting in and finally training formally again.” Felix had stopped studying violin in high school when his lifelong, world-class mentor had passed away and he refused to train under anyone else, deciding to self-teach for the last handful of years. He rejected going to college for similar reasons (maybe. Felix never fully explained why he stayed in town), a huge waste of his gift, but Sylvain always thought he might change his mind. And he always figured Felix would get tired of playing amateur basement nonsense with his high school friends when he had talents that belonged on stage at Carnegie Hall or the MET. 

“Boston’s not that far,” Felix said with all the persuasion of a nineteen-year-old at a dive bar (aka Felix just a few years ago, aka someone who did not get to drink that night). “We can still make music, just, um… y’know.”

_No, Felix, I don’t know._

Dedue broke the awkward, depressing silence. “We’ll make the best of it, guys. There’s nothing that can be done at this point, so let’s just focus on the upcoming weeks.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Nothing can make this tour anything less than the best trip, best tour ever. I don’t care what happens after. Let’s just make the best of it.” Annette was bouncing in place, her hands clasped together under her chin like a little kid and her goofy smile once again taking up prime real estate on her face. 

“Thank you guys.” Felix’s expression had ameliorated, but the subtle shadow in his irises, the upward quirk of his eyebrows, kept Sylvain’s heart lodged firmly in his throat. It wasn’t going to come out. 

They stayed in the basement for another half hour or so, discussing everything they wanted to do or see in the handful of cities they’d be visiting in the upcoming days. Sylvain threw in a couple ideas about the best bars in Philadelphia and what the _hell_ they were gonna do in Buffalo (none of them knew, like, at all), trying to hide the fact that within just a few minutes he had felt all excitement for the tour suddenly evaporate out of him like a beach towel shaken of sand. Eleven days on the road covering over 1300 miles. Twelve days and Felix would be 300 miles away. The two were now the same to Sylvain. 

Suddenly it was a half hour to midnight and everyone realized they should’ve been home, preferably sleeping, by now; they had a long day, a long drive, a big night ahead of them. They left their equipment in the garage, put away and ready to be packed for the road in the morning. 

“Remember everyone,” called Dimitri, as he and Annette got into his car, which sat beside Dedue and Sylvain and Ingrid’s in the very crowded driveway. “I am picking you up between eight and eight-thirty tomorrow, so be ready. You’ll find out why soon enough. Get excited.” With not a further word of explanation and a reluctant, confused wave from everyone watching, he drove off. There was no use fighting it anymore. When it came to aggressive benevolence, Dimitri always got his way. 

Everyone else left within moments, getting into their own car or someone else’s, save Sylvain, who lingered with Felix in the driveway for what already felt like too long. 

“I’m sorry, Sylvain.” Felix didn’t make eye contact.

“For what?”

“I should have told you first. It felt… wrong telling you with everyone else.”

“Why?” 

Felix looked at Sylvain with a classic ‘Felix looking at Sylvain’ face. Annoyed, but not in any meaningful way. Endeared, but not in any meaningful way. “Because you’re my best friend? And… I saw how much it hurt you? Unless-”

“Felix, it’s okay.” It wasn’t okay, but he wasn’t mad at Felix for not telling him sooner, he was mad at Felix for being so easy to take away, for taking up the biggest space inside Sylvain that would now be left empty and wanting, at the universe for doing this to him- “Why would I be mad?” 

Felix sighed and put a hand on Sylvain’s shoulder. “Alright.” His smirk returned. “Then get out of here. I’ll see you bright and early in Dimitri’s horse and buggy or whatever.” Sylvain laughed as Felix clapped him on the back and took it as an obvious cue to leave. He got in the driver’s side, waved at Felix, and took off in the direction of his apartment. 

It wasn’t until he was halfway to home that he realized he would never again see that house, the house with old creaky steps and three geriatric cats, with Felix and his brother’s growth marked in pencil in the kitchen entryway, the house where he had spent countless weekend mornings and run away to every time his house didn’t feel like home.

* * *

Sylvain felt guilty honking his car’s obnoxiously loud horn outside a building full of people at not even eight o’clock in the morning, but he had been texting and calling Hilda for ten minutes with absolutely no response. This morning was time-sensitive, and if she was still asleep there was no hope for them getting back to Sylvain’s in time for Dimitri’s arrival, considering her morning routine could take up to an hour. He had told her that she didn’t need to bother considering they were leaving for a long car trip, but she probably didn’t listen. 

She suddenly came bounding down the stairs and flying towards the car holding a suitcase which looked like it belonged to a small child but could probably fit a grown man inside. Sylvain opened the trunk for her and waited for a second before she opened the passenger’s side door and practically jumped into the seat.

“Good morning!” she basically screamed into his ear as she leaned in and squeezed his arm. “I hope I wasn’t too late coming out, I almost forgot some very important things.”

“It’s alright, I’m just glad you were actually awake.” Sylvain immediately put the car in reverse and left the parking lot.

“I actually couldn’t sleep last night,” Hilda said, for probably the first time in her entire life, “I was packing until late and then I got too excited so I called my brother and then before I knew it it was already seven!” 

Sylvain couldn’t help but laugh at Hilda’s “nothing matters” attitude towards everything she did; quitting her job to go on her friends’ tour, keeping anyone she pleased (often Sylvain) awake at any hour, not even knowing what a savings account was for- she was certifiably insane and all of these things put together were certainly a cause for concern, but Hilda seemed so carefree, so enlightened by her devil-may-care liftestyle that Sylvain sometimes wished he could say fuck it and join her on an ecstasy bender or something. 

Hilda chatted excitedly all fifteen minutes back to Sylvain’s apartment, and when they got back, there was an enormous RV-looking vehicle in his parking spot. 

“Hey man, what gives?” Sylvain shouted at the hypothetical driver as he got out of the car. “You can’t just park wherever your-” 

“Sorry,” Dimitri said smugly as he hopped down from the elevated driver’s seat. “Whatever asshole lives here should really defend his spot better.”

Hilda laughed, but Sylvain was still not sure what he was seeing. Was this really the mysterious answer to all Dimitri’s cryptic plans? It looked both too small and too big at the same time. 

“Fuckin’ sweet!” Hilda cheered. “What’cha waiting for, Sly? Are we going or not?”

“I’m holding my tongue ‘til I see the inside, but I gotta grab my stuff first.” He headed directly up the stairs to his front door and into his living room, where he had already organized everything he was bringing with him. Before he could put anything over his shoulder or in his hands, Hilda opened the door and stepped in beside him. She had no reason to follow him inside, but the look on her face said otherwise. 

“I figured you’d have a heavy load and wanted to help,” she said cheekily before he could ask. A blush set in across her cheeks, deeper than the artificial blush she seemed to like over-using, and she bit her lip in that performative Hilda way. “And… I didn’t wanna get sappy in front of your friends but I wanted to thank you again for inviting me. You really don’t know how much it means to me.” Sylvain knew he could never, ever tell her it was basically a Freudian slip that got her here as he saw how _sincere_ she was being for once in her life and she stood on her toes (and he unconsciously leaned down to allow her) to kiss him on the corner of his mouth. 

“From the look on your face I’m guessing… your friends don’t know about us and I probably shouldn’t do that again?” Hilda asked even though she definitely already knew the answer. Sylvain hated that. _Us._ Who was _us?_ Sylvain and Felix had always been an “us”. Add in Dimitri and Ingrid and they were still an “us.” MIDKNIGHT was an “us.” Sylvain and Hilda were Sylvain and Hilda. Even when they were together, there was no unit to be named. 

“Uh. I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Hilda nodded hesitantly, her eyes not meeting him at all. “Got it. Anyways… let’s grab this stuff and get in the bus!” 

Sylvain still couldn’t believe Dimitri brought a bus, even as he watched him load Sylvain’s and Hilda’s suitcases into the luggage compartment, which was already pretty packed. They all stepped inside and well, it wasn’t what Sylvain was expecting. It wasn’t just a bus, it was an actual tour bus, complete with a little corridor of curtained bunks, onto one of which he threw his overnight duffel bag, a mini kitchen, and a cramped but sizable living room area at the bus’s south end. Everyone had taken up occupancy in either a bunk or a seat on the endearingly drab couch, save Annette, who was entertaining herself in the red swivel chair next to the minute kitchen table. 

Sylvain heard all his friends greet him excitedly, but he was honestly dumbstruck as he continued to explore and absorb the atmosphere of the bus. It was pretty run-down, definitely not from the last ten years, but regardless, it made him feel like a celebrity. 

“God, Dimitiri, how much did this thing cost you?” No matter its age, it was huge, and it had everything- the beds, a clunky old (but still working, as evidenced by Ingrid’s channel-flipping) TV, a fridge that was _almost_ mini and on which already rested a few six-packs and Ingrid’s infamous custom bong. 

“Both not enough and too much for me to tell you. Saw a guy in Delaware selling it for what was already a good deal, some guy who was in a punk band in the 90’s but needed to sell it for child support money. Played him one of our tracks, said he liked us and knocked a chunk off the asking price.” Dimitri was seen as something of a cheeseball to those that knew him best, but he was eerily charismatic and persuasive when he needed to be. 

“Wait, how’d you get your car back from Delaware?”

“Dedue came with me and we drove back separately.” 

“Wait, you knew?!” Annette squeaked, an accusatory look pointed at Dedue, who laughed it off. 

“I’m so good at keeping secrets that you wouldn’t know- that’s how good I am at it.” 

Sylvain actually did know- there was a fair handful of things he had entrusted to Dedue over the years, and vice versa, like when Dedue first developed feelings for Ashe and Sylvain had to wait almost a year for them both to stop dancing around it and start dating. Most of them were tight-lipped, it seemed, except Hilda and Annette, who were notorious gossips, which made Sylvain nervous whenever they spoke. Hilda knew, besides the obvious, a _weird_ amount of information about him. 

“It’s so perfect, Dimitri, and thanks again for having me,” she said, throwing herself into his arms. 

“So, should we hit the road?”

“Wait.” Sylvain hesitated, missing a key bit of information. “Who’s driving this thing?”

Dimitri shrugged. “I’m driving today, but I figure we can take turns depending on who’s in what mood in the morning.” Like it was that easy.

“None of us know how to drive a bus, but Dimitri seems to think if we don’t talk about it it’s fine,” Felix scoffed, arms crossed and legs stretched across to the other side of the couch. It seemed everyone was fine with this arrangement or had no alternatives, and Sylvain didn’t have time to come up with one before Dimitri excused himself and returned to the driver’s seat. In the end, if he got the thing back from Delaware, it must be fine. 

It was two hours to Brooklyn, two hours of anxious laughter and constant checking on Dimitri (who was doing a great job and enjoying the drive all the while). Everyone else had fit themselves into the dumpy, U-shaped couch in the “living room”, each involved in their own busy little tasks. Dedue read a novel in silence, Ashe by his side re-re-re-reviewing their venue bookings, while Ingrid worked in her sketchbook on the design for her next tattoo. After watching Hilda try and fail to roll a blunt for forty-five minutes (“it’s ‘cause of my nails!”), Sylvain turned to Felix, who was between him and Annette, unblinkingly reading a book on violin, as if the show was an exam he had forgotten to study for and he was now cramming. He hadn’t said anything since they had started on the road, and considering everything, Sylvain was beginning to grow uncomfortable with his silence. 

“Felix, did you forget how to play again?” Sylvain gently teased.

“I’m reading about a world-famous violinist who’s currently an instructor at New England Conservatory,” Felix responded, dryly, without looking up. “If I get the opportunity to learn under her, I’d like to know her practice a bit first.” Sylvain wasn’t really sure how Felix was going to get into any of these music schools years after graduating high school and with no recent formal training, but there was no denying his confidence about it. Maybe someone recommended him? Sylvain had no idea how any of that worked. 

“That’ll be great for you, Fe,” Sylvain said, as if Felix wasn’t aware. Felix shrugged. There was nothing else to be said. 

“Hey, Dedue,” Hilda suddenly piped up. “I just realized, the bus is fine and all that, but where are we gonna be, uh, sleeping?”

Dedue pointed towards the front of the bus. “Those bunks are more comfortable than they look. Promise.” 

Hilda laughed apprehensively, worrying Sylvain that she might get mad if she was expecting a nice hotel every night or something. “But, there’s only six of them,” she pointed out.

“Well I’m sharing with Ashe, and Annette and Mercie agreed to share, too, so that just leaves the-”

“I’ll share a bunk with Sylvain,” Hilda urged, much too quickly, like this was the point she was trying to get the conversation to arrive at, which it might have been. Sylvain tried not to react too much, but also to react just enough, like the prospect of sharing a bed with Hilda was weird and unfamiliar, like he hadn’t done it twice in just the last week. He subtly looked over at Felix, whose expression read confused, which was better than angry or suspicious. “You know, ‘cause he invited me and I’m so tiny anyway,” she added, much more calmly. 

“Wow, Sylvain, I think that’s the easiest you’ve ever gotten a girl in your bed,” Ingrid teased, warranting a stifled laugh from Felix and a dropped jaw on Hilda, who blushed and crossed her arms across her chest. “Sorry, Hilda, I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“It’s fine, you’re probably right.”

Sylvain turned and pulled the blinds up from the window behind him. They were still somewhere on the parkway. Based on when they left, he figured they were about a half hour from reaching the venue.

Sylvain passed that half hour trying, much harder than he should’ve needed to, not to imagine the kind of life Felix might have in Boston, at whatever music school for prodigies he ended up at; the classes he might take, the people he might meet, the jobs he might get and the friends and lovers he might take and the fame he might see and the memories he would make that would eventually replace all those he had of Jersey, of MIDKNIGHT, of Sylvain. He imagined himself as an old man, broke and alone, calling Felix for companionship, for one scrap of lost youth, and getting hung up on, being told by old-man-Felix that he didn’t know a Sylvain and to stop calling this number. 

Eventually, the bus slowed, and Ashe called out that they had arrived. Sylvain pulled up the blinds to see the front of the venue: it was generally an unassuming building, like most in this city, but there was a sandwich board out front with MIDKNIGHT- AUGUST 17TH (and the name of the other band booked for the night, the unknown opening act) written on both sides. Well, that was a good sign. The other good sign at the front of the venue was the groups of people beginning to congregate at the door. Doors wouldn’t open for a few hours. Were they really that dedicated to seeing the band up close? The venue wasn’t that big… well, it was flattering, if not a little frightening. The bus pulled around the corner and into the small lot at the back of the venue, where there seemed to be a designated spot for buses and vans. 

Exiting the bus and stretching all their limbs, the group immediately got to work emptying their equipment from the storage hold of the bus, as Ashe went in to talk to… well, whoever was in charge of letting them in (it was starting to occur to Sylvain that he had no idea what he was doing, like, at all). Once he came back out, it seemed they got the okay to start bringing everything inside, so they did just that. 

The venue was bigger than any other they’d performed in for any of their non-tour gigs, and Sylvain was floored by the vast sea of empty space in front of the stage. Was it going to be filled with people singing along? Was the floor going to be empty, sending them home with the rest of the tour canceled out of shame? Would the crowd thin out the moment they heard Sylvain’s voice? Would he ruin this? Was he in over his head?

“Sylvain, you okay?” Ingrid asked, standing beside him, but facing the empty venue. 

“Is this insane?” Sylvain wondered aloud. “Are we cut out for this?”

“We wouldn’t have been able to book the venue if we weren’t, man,” she said, clapping him on the back. “Now come on, help us out here.”

After getting all their equipment in order for the performance, with some help from the venue staff, they decided to sound check some of their songs, starting with their opener. Dedue’s starting drum lick had never sounded so grand, so important as it did in that room, reaching the ceiling and the back wall covered in old posters, and Sylvain tried his damndest to make sure his voice could match up with the sounds that his friends were producing. He was nervous. He had never been nervous before. There wasn’t even anyone watching them yet. Besides Hilda. 

_Oh. Hilda._ She was sitting on a folding chair in the middle of the floor, making sure everything sounded right from the audience’s perspective. Sylvain realized that she had never seen them perform before, even when they did local shows. Was she what was making him so nervous? It couldn’t be her. It was _Hilda._ She already knew everything about him.

Sound check took longer than expected due to lots of playing around with sound and an argument between Ingrid and Felix over who would stand where. There wasn’t much time until the opener would start, but they were all starving, so Dimitri ran across the street to get sandwiches from a deli and they sat backstage, eating greedily while Sylvain’s anxiety caught up with everyone else. 

“I can’t believe we’re doing this. I feel crazy,” Annette whined, her knees pulled to her chest, her half-eaten calzone resting on its wrapper in front of her feet. 

“It’s gonna be fine, Annie,” Mercedes reassured her, rubbing her back with one hand. 

“You guys sounded amazing when you ran through the setlist earlier,” said Hilda, calming Sylvain’s nerves, if only a little. “Now, add in a few hundred people, and yeah, I can understand why you’d be nervous…”

“Not helping, Hilda.” Felix laughed as he said it. “Do you think there are that many?”

Ashe stood up and shrugged. “Ticket sales don’t lie, but…” he peered out at the floor. “I’d say it’s a full house, guys.” 

Before anyone could say anything else, a small group of unfamiliar people came walking through backstage. 

“Hey, you guys are MIDKNIGHT?” One of them asked, an acoustic-guitar-wielding girl who was probably their age. They all agreed, and Annette waved. “Cool. Pleasure to meet you all. We’re ‘Cloud Nine’. We’re going on now. Testing the waters for you.”

“We believe in you!” Annette shouted as the other band exited backstage.

Listening to Cloud Nine, Sylvain noticed they sounded absolutely nothing like MIDKNIGHT, but Sylvain figured it was their fault for not planning a real tour opener and just letting each venue book whoever. And they were good- heavily acoustic and dreamy, like the unknown tracks Dedue liked to play on late-night car rides. 

Sylvain found himself getting a little lost in Cloud Nine’s set, and before he knew it, they were coming backstage, breathing heavily and glowing like the stage lights were still on them.

“How’d it go?” Dedue asked them. 

“That crowd is fantastic,” their drummer responded. “I don’t know how many of them knew us, but they were really fun. You guys are gonna have a great time.” 

It wasn’t until he said that that Sylvain realized that the opener coming backstage meant it was time for… them. The main act. 

“You guys ready to go?” Ingrid asked everyone else, (excluding Ashe and Hilda, who had headed down the floor to work the merch table during Cloud Nine’s set, and Mercedes, who was watching the stage from the back of the venue), her fingernails in her mouth signaling that she was questioning whether she herself was ready as well. 

“Ready, as we’ll ever be,” Dimitri boasted, as if the pressure of the moment wasn’t getting to him at all. This was their first night of their first tour. Their first show they could confidently call a ‘concert’. It was all happening in a matter of moments. “Come on. Let’s give them our best.”

The six of them stepped out on to the stage to cheers and blinding light. Sylvain struggled to blink the light out of his eyes and faced the crowd. Ashe was right. It was a full house. There were 300 (?) people watching him. They were waiting for him. He looked across the sea of faces to see Hilda, staring at the merch table, ignoring the customer in front of her to hop up and down and wave at Sylvain, her smile wider than any other in the room. Sylvain’s heart jumped up into his throat and suddenly he was more lost for words than before. 

“Hey,” Felix leaned in and whispered to him. “You got this. I’m right here.”

It was Felix’s voice that finally gave Sylvain the courage to speak. 

“Hey,” he started, looking down into the crowd at a group of people, maybe teenagers, who were closest to the stage, the same group he saw at the door hours ago. “We’re MIDKNIGHT. Nice to finally meet you.” 

Without another word, the music started, and Sylvain had no more time to overthink. As the song went on, he took longer than he should’ve to realize why the song sounded so different- some of the audience was singing along, in harsh and beautiful discord, to the lyrics he’d written with Dedue on a Red Bull-fueled bender at the beach last summer. Settling into the comfortable rhythm of the song, reminding himself that he could do this in his sleep, Sylvain felt all his anxiety fall away. He glanced left, at Felix, who turned to look back at him, a smile like Sylvain hadn’t seen in years spread across his face. Sylvain stepped closer to Felix, nearly resting his head on his shoulder as the song approached a climax and he reached his highest note. 

When the song was over, Sylvain spoke again. “Thanks again for coming out to see us.” Was he supposed to be saying more? He felt like the songs spoke for themselves, but simultaneously like he owed the crowd more. Was it his job to speak or should he give the rest of the band a chance? He was the one singing most of the night.

They didn’t give each other, or him, another chance to speak up, continuing with the setlist, Felix’s opening violin riff stunning the crowd silent for a moment. Sylvain kept close to Felix for the entirety of the song, and the next one, and before Sylvain knew it, he was sharing the edge of the stage with Annette, powering through the end of their last song. 

Dimitri’s last guitar chord reverberated through the venue and just like that the show was over. “Uh, thank you, Brooklyn!” Sylvain shouted as everyone around him rose, waved and bowed, and exited to backstage. With the lights out of his eyes and nobody but his friends in front of him, Sylvain finally came back to reality. 

“Did that feel like, like, two minutes to anyone else? I swear, we just got out there-”

“That was really something,” said Dedue, who had apparently taken off his shirt at some point during the show, wiping sweat off his forehead with the discarded tee and leaning against the brick wall, breathing heavily.

“Did you hear the crowd?” Annette asked, grabbing Dedue by the arm. “I think they really liked us.” 

“I would say so, Annette.” Dimitri came up behind Felix and Sylvain and put his arms across each of their backs, his hands on each of their shoulders, posing like a proud father with his two delinquent sons. “Can you believe it, guys?” He continued, the tone of his voice indicating that he was now talking only to those two sons, and his reluctant daughter, who had fallen back into a folding chair, her bass at her side. “We met in church choir and now we’re doing sold-out concerts.” Dimtri and Sylvain laughed at the memory, but Felix ducked out from under Dimitri’s arm, he and Ingrid sharing the same expression, which read simply as _we don’t talk about elementary school church choir._

The show was over, and there was basically nothing that could be done except leave. Sylvain stood at the edge of backstage, the veil between Sylvain and MIDKNIGHT’s frontman, and watched the crowd thin out. Drunk men held hands and guided each other to the exit, teenage girls buzzed like mosquitos around the merch table, couples waited for each other at the bathroom door. Sylvain felt at once an overwhelming sorrow watching them hover, and leave, and laugh, as the connection he’d had to them had taken just minutes to fizzle out. He wanted to stop them, ask them what they thought of the show, of the music, if he was doing a good job; but that was not what you were supposed to do. You gave the best performance you could, bleeding into each song, and then the crowd left, each person taking a little piece of Sylvain with them. 

Once the line at the merch table had dried up, Ashe came backstage to deliver the good news: most of the CD stock had gone, along with a satisfactory number of the t-shirts and posters, and someone had even bought one of the extremely limited (because all of them, even Dimitri and Ashe, recognized what a difficult sell they would be) fleece blankets they had gotten made. The best seller of the night, which Hilda and Ashe both predicted, was the shirt with MIDKNIGHT’s logo and Brooklyn’s name and tour date written in block letters on the front, the total list of tour dates on the back. They had made one of these designs for each stop on the tour (though they’d produced a hell of a lot more for the Brooklyn and Boston dates than they had for Buffalo or New Haven). Nothing sells like hometown pride. 

Hilda came backstage, too, sprinting up the stairs to envelope Sylvain in a death squeeze, repeating in her highest voice how proud she was of him, and of everyone else, and how she had never seen anything like them, how they sounded just like they did on the album and how much she loved him; the word, which Sylvain used to feel comfortable slinging at any of his friends, even Hilda, for any reason, had now become gummed up by the last four months of clandestine encounters. Love, which Sylvain had held for Hilda for years, after helping each other through the last hurrahs of high school and the sticky, soul-crushing beginnings of adulthood, was now loaded by the knowledge of each other they had gained in secret, and after she said it, the air stuck to their skin, and she let go of him.

They allowed themselves one more minute of self-aggrandizing celebration, each of them crediting each other for the success of the show, Mercedes wiping Annie’s tears away (“Why are you crying?”;”I don’t know, but I can’t stop!”) as Ashe and Dedue shared a giddy, electric kiss, which Hilda watched with jealousy, which Sylvain saw but chose to ignore. There was no reason for them to kiss in public- they barely kissed in private, only when they were starting sex or ending it. After the minute was up and the stars in their eyes dissipated, the nine of them quickly deconstructed the set and put everything back in its place in the hold of the bus, leaving no trace they were ever there except the poster on the wall and their name scribbled on the sandwich board out front. 

They piled into the bus, then, squeezing the entire group onto the couch, save Sylvain, who sat in the swivel chair meant for the “kitchen” table, and Hilda, who sat on the floor between his legs. Dimitri, citing the evening as a cause for proper celebration, opened the fridge (which Sylvain hadn’t realized until that moment was filled with literally nothing but beer, soda, and canned wine, like a child’s approximation of what adulthood was like) and handed everyone their drink of choice. 

“Wait, again, this makes no sense,” Hilda mused through a yawn, reminding Sylvain that she hadn’t slept at all the previous night, “We’re sleeping on the bus, fine. But, like, where…?”

“Here. The venues said they don’t mind since there’s no shows after us, as long as we’re out early enough in the morning.” Dimitri’s tone was so matter-of-fact that nobody dared questioning the logic of sleeping in a parking lot in the middle of Brooklyn. Hilda shrugged, took another sip of wine, and the conversation was over, replaced by the many that were taking place before. 

The night slipped noisily away, the bus transforming every few minutes from a classroom, filled with little conversations between two or three people at a time, speaking over each other and catching only glimpses of what worlds the others were occupying, to a lecture hall, one of them dictating stories and information to the rest, who listened in half-drunk awe, and occasionally into a courtroom, two parties (most often Ingrid and Sylvain) yelling over each other as everyone else waited for the fight to dissolve back into giggles. They kept drinking, at some point losing count of who had had how many and whose beer was whose and who was drunk and who was just exhausted from their long day, and why was Annette crying again? After a while Hilda remembered that she had eventually managed to roll that blunt from earlier, and lit it, and almost everyone else (of course, not Dimitri or Dedue) revealed that they had brought weed as well, because what else did people do after rock concerts, and they pooled it together and packed and repacked and lit and re-lit Ingrid’s bong, which was so hilariously ugly it only elevated the coughing laughs of whoever currently had their mouth at its neck. 

Sylvain, now cross-faded as could be, and exhausted, and still feeling the pull of every stranger who had left the venue with a shard of his psyche, eventually fell into near-complete silence. Maybe unusual for him, but he was content with watching the scene, which felt straight out of a coming-of-age film or a making-of biopic for some washed up, no longer relevant rock group. That night could only be called what it was; a triumph. A long-awaited, (maybe?) well-deserved triumph, an underdog victory, the six-pack after six-pack being demolished as good a stand-in as any for a cooler of Gatorade to be dumped on their leading man. Sylvain felt like that was probably supposed to be him, as the frontman of the band, but knew, and knew that everyone else knew, that that title belonged more to Dimitri, or maybe even to Ashe, despite his knowing nothing about the music itself. 

And yet, despite this triumph, despite everyone else’s fervent energy, raucous laughter, despite Hilda at his feet and Ingrid to his left, despite the fact that tonight was, objectively, the greatest of his entire life, Sylvain felt a tenderness, an eager, attention-grabbing tenderness, like a fresh, hot bruise, just over his heart. He tried to laugh at whatever Hilda was laughing at, some story Dimitri was telling about what he and Dedue had seen last year in Canada, his arms flailing in the air as he spoke. He could hear Dedue telling a story from the same trip to Mercedes, calmer and quieter than Dimitri, and watched Annette giggle as she listened in. Ashe was across Dedue’s lap. It was a perfect night. And still, that throbbing over his heart. He opened another beer, drinking it far too quickly, but the feeling persisted, and Sylvain closed his eyes, mentally throwing fastballs at the deepest parts of his mind trying to turn it off and join everyone else in the world of stories and neon lights (which Dimitri had revealed earlier that the bus had, much to Annette’s delight). 

He was happy. He was. He knew he was happy because everyone around him was. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to laugh, or joke, or even fight, along with everyone else. He was smiling, he could feel he was smiling, but he was one more tease from Ingrid away from crying, which he hadn’t done in months but could feel the threat lingering behind his dry, stoned eyes. Was that it? Was he too high to decipher happiness from sadness? 

Hilda laughed between his legs, and looked up at him, as if expecting him to be laughing with her. But he wasn’t, and he saw her wide, goofy smile fade to be as small and muted as his, and in that moment, Sylvain had never hated himself more, never wanted more to apologize to everyone for not being what they wanted and for ruining the night, and leave the bus and disappear into the streets of Brooklyn to never be seen again. But he didn’t. He stayed, and the moment passed, and Hilda laughed again, and his small smile crept back up on his face, and he left his mind and returned to the red swivel chair to watch his friends feel a joy he, for no reason, couldn’t. 

Directly across the little aisle from Sylvain, at the furthest end of the couch, was Felix, who was also quietly, contently observing, his eyes on Annette. Sylvain often wondered if there was something between Felix and Annette, or if there wasn’t, if Felix wished there was, since he seemed to have a special sort of softness within him which he very rarely showed to anyone that wasn’t Annette or a cat. But a few years ago, on a night _almost_ like this one, not as loud or celebratory but just as hazy and smoky and boozy, when they were joking about girlfriends and why Sylvain had so many and Felix never had any, Felix had stepped down from the joke and quietly said something about not seeing women like that, and Sylvain knew what that meant. But he never said anything, never pushed it, because he knew Felix would come out when he was ready, because he had done that before, when they were children, with an entirely different secret. And because Sylvain knew he wasn’t ready, either, to say that he didn’t see _only_ women like that, so he and Felix could hide, together. And he never wondered about Annette again. 

But he kept watching Felix watch everyone else, now two entire degrees removed from everything around him. Sylvain hoped desperately that Felix wasn’t in the same place he was, that he wasn’t also quiet because he was in some mysterious, stupid, petty emotional distress, that he didn’t also have some tenderness, if not above his heart than in his teeth, or in his fist. But he knew Felix was happy. If Felix wasn’t happy, he wouldn’t be there, he would have left to get some cigarettes from the corner store and came back when he was feeling better, or he would have told off whatever or whoever was bothering him and moved on. He wasn’t Sylvain. He didn’t hide his unhappiness. Sylvain knew this. 

Sylvain knew this from years of knowing Felix, years of indescribable closeness and embarrassing, painful fuck-ups that taught each other how the other worked, like dismantling a mechanical clock and putting it back together. And this closeness, now, was ending, being torn to shreds by the sharp edges of state borders, and Sylvain had never felt this kind of terror, this urge to sew Felix’s hips to his own, since Sylvain had _almost_ gone to college but decided not to. Watching Felix, recognizing the velocity of their ending, Sylvain closed his eyes again and told himself to stop throwing fastballs. _This_ was that sore spot above his heart. It was the show, sure, and the scattering of his inner self all across Brooklyn, moving across the city with every person at the venue, but mostly, it was Felix, and Boston, and the conjunction of the two. Felix was his soft spot. He always had been. 

“Y’okay, Sylvain?” Felix suddenly asked, and Sylvain snapped back to reality, a little more sober now than before, but hurting worse, though his smile stayed. “You’re looking at me funny.” 

Sylvain gasped for air for a moment, like he had just come up from the bottom of a swimming pool, and tried to speak, his tongue tripping around the word “yes”, and then “I”, and then Sylvain was suddenly, inexplicably, undeniably crying, and he heard around him every other sound fall to a hush. 

“Sylvain!” Felix sputtered, with indeterminate emotion. 

“Are you okay?” asked someone, maybe Ingrid, and then Hilda was holding him, and so was Dimitri, and for a minute, he let himself cry in their arms, like they were his parents and he’d had a nightmare, before he regained composure and came back to himself, feeling more embarrassed than he ever had. 

“Sorry, guys,” Sylvain sighed, wiping one last tear from his eyes, forcing a grin. “I’m just really crossed, I shouldn’t have had that last beer; I’m fine.” But everyone was still staring at him, worried, or astonished, or both, and he wanted to crawl out of his skin, so he added that he thought he should go to bed, they had been drinking and smoking and talking for hours, and it was so late, but everyone else should stay up if they wanted. 

So he got up, without a fuss, and grabbed his pajamas from his duffel, and changed in the bus’s tiny bathroom, and climbed into the top bunk on the right side of the corridor, and closed the curtain, and closed his eyes, and waited for it all to stop. His thoughts, his heart’s useless and unnecessarily quick pounding, the pain in his chest. He listened to his friends continue to talk, and wondered if they were talking about him, and didn’t know if he wanted them to be or not. They were muffled now. He missed them. But there would be more gigs; there would be more nights. Tomorrow there was Connecticut. 

And then there would be Boston. 

* * *

Sylvain woke in the same darkness he had fallen asleep in, thanks to the curtain that did a surprisingly good job at blocking any light from pervading the bunk. He couldn’t say for sure how long he’d been asleep, but he knew it had been a while, because Hilda, who took an eternity to fall asleep, if ever, was snoring beside him, her head buried in his armpit, her arm around his waist. Gently shaking her off, he pulled back the curtain; it was morning, at least, and the bus was filled with light and the sound of Dedue, shouting just a little, trying to convince Felix not to play the knife game. 

It was just a butter knife, luckily, Sylvain discovered when he stepped into the front area of the bus, which had a few small tables surrounded by bolted-down plastic chairs. 

“Isn’t it a little early for this, Felix?” he asked, taking a seat next to him. 

“Isn’t it early for you to suck my dick?” Felix retorted, putting the knife down. 

Sylvain ignored the question, lest he think too hard on it and get that mental image stuck in his head, choosing instead to ask the room what time it actually was, seeing as he had misplaced his phone at some point in the night. 

“It’s almost eleven,” Dimitri answered, now using Felix’s discarded toy to spread cream cheese on an onion bagel. “and Annette, Ingrid and Ashe are all still asleep, and Hilda, but I’m sure you knew that. I don’t blame them, though, we turned in pretty late last night.”

“How late?”

“About an hour after you, so around four? Here, have a bagel, they’re real New York bagels.” 

“Not as good as Jersey bagels,” Felix said, watching Sylvain’s hand rummage around in the brown bag until he found an everything bagel. And he was right; they weren’t as good as the bagels you could get on pretty much any street at home. But they were still good, so Sylvain ate his, and Felix took one, and they all sat around the small tables eating and enjoying the Sunday morning as everyone else slowly woke up and joined them. 

Nobody brought up Sylvain’s little outburst the previous night, but he could tell some of them had taken it to heart, from the way Mercedes kept responding over-eagerly to everything he said and Ashe offered him, and nobody else, the last bagel about sixteen hundred times. 

Eventually they were all fed, washed (it dawned on them all at once that the bus didn’t have a shower, and they all frantically searched up truck stops and cheap spas on the road from New Haven to Boston), dressed, and ready to leave Brooklyn. Annette offered to drive, which nearly caused a riot before Dedue insisted he should drive, at least today, since he knew the way so well, which was the most obvious lie Sylvain had ever heard considering Dedue just said last night he’d never been to Connecticut. But Annette didn’t catch it, so, crisis averted, at least for that stretch of the trip. 

It was a shorter drive from Brooklyn to New Haven than from home to Brooklyn, but it passed nearly the exact same way, with everyone (except Dedue, who had been replaced with Dimitri for now) scattered across the bus and trying to focus their nervous energy (which had dwindled a good amount since the day before) into other tasks. Sylvain realized for the second day in a row that he really needed a hobby, and spent about an hour helping Ingrid with her tattoo design, which had spun out of control and needed desperately to be reigned in and have some of the many pairs of wings removed.

Felix, blissfully unaware of his role in the previous night’s meltdown, was still deeply focused on his book, which must have been longer or more complicated than it looked. Sylvain had no idea how much there could be said about violin besides how to play it, but it must have been riveting, because he hadn’t seen Felix genuinely invested in a book since the last Warrior Cats series came out in middle school. Sylvain wanted to ask how he was liking it (Felix’s face said irritation, but when didn’t it), but there was something subtly stunning about watching him read, like standing on the outside of Felix’s inner world, watching through a rose-colored window. It was a quieter, more toned down version of watching Felix actually play violin, one of Sylvain’s favorite sights. 

They were in New Haven, pulling up to the venue before any of them expected, due to their unfamiliarity with Connecticut in general. Again, there was a line from the door that extended past the first corner of the building. Sylvain was at first surprised by the sheer number of people that were already there (they were in _Connecticut)_ and then had a moment of panic when he remembered the other Midknight, the electro-swing act that was native to the state (they didn’t capitalize it!), ultimately deciding that even if people showed up by mistake, they were still ultimately watching _their,_ MIDKNIGHT’s, show. 

Once doors were open, and the crowd had started filing in, Sylvain noticed a stark difference in the demographics between here and Brooklyn- whereas their first show had been in front of people of all ages and walks of life, tonight’s crowd was almost entirely people their age, largely girls, who all looked… well-off. 

“This is your paradise, huh, Syl?” Ingrid asked, her voice pointed, slapping him on the shoulder. She must have noticed him watching the crowd, but…

“What is this all about?”

“Yale girls.” _Oh. Of course._ They were in New Haven. “I guess you have your pick of the litter…” Ingrid was teasing him, like always, but he could detect a hint of sincerity in her voice, like she was trying to scope out if he had any intention of acting on his base impulses like everyone always expected him to. He hadn’t even thought of that, considering he had brought Hilda along; they weren’t remotely exclusive, and she had basically given him her blessing before she knew she was coming, but now that she was here, it would be kind of fucked up to hit on or hook up with another girl in front of her face. Plus, Felix… Felix hated seeing him return to the old lady-killing habits he had learned to tone down in the last year or so. Sylvain didn’t know why it upset him so much, he just knew it often led to a fight or a quiet phase between the two of them, and he would very much like to avoid that, always (a day with little or no conversation with Felix was a bad day, a non-day) but especially now. 

Plus, even if he wanted to spend the night with some college girl, where would he take her? His bunk in the bus? How romantic. 

Their openers, of which they had three of for that performance, were also very clearly Yale kids; there was a shoegaze-y five-piece group with lyrics that were closer to slam poetry than anything else, a soloist who seemed to forget how to play her guitar halfway through the first song, and a band that made Sylvain wonder if acid rock could still be called that when performed by rich twenty year olds. Overall, though, they were solid acts, and by the time it was MIDKNIGHT’s time to go on, the crowd seemed prepared with whetted appetites to watch. 

The Connecticut crowd was smaller, certainly, than Brooklyn, but not any less receptive, or lively; in fact, this seemed more like a crowd of seasoned fans rather than being made up of people who went to random music shows simply because it was something to do. It hadn’t occurred to Sylvain that a band of attractive twenty-somethings making music about being twenty-something and full of angst and weed might appeal primarily to college kids, and he wasn’t sure if this was a sign of the quick-aging juvenility of their music and spelled an awful reputation or if it was simply inevitable. Either way, New Haven showed the band a fantastic night, though Sylvain couldn’t quite remember most of it: the show went just as quickly as last night’s did, inexplicably, and he wasn’t sure if it was nerves or excitement or both, or if he was just crazy, and in case of the latter, he was almost afraid to ask if this was just how concerts felt from the other side. The crowd sang along to almost every song, and sold out nearly all of the night’s allotted merchandise, and by the time the band was back on the bus for the night, they were all drunk on high energy and attention, and exhausted by the pull of the stage lights (and the obvious: the show itself, with all its shouting and standing and holding their heavier-than-they-look instruments and doing it all without a moment to breathe). 

Having more opening acts meant the show ran longer than the previous night, and doing two shows in a row, meant everyone was basically ready to turn in for the night, deciding another after-party wasn’t in their best interest. They all changed, taking turns in the bathroom for what must have been an hour (due in large part to both Hilda and Mercedes’ nighttime skincare routines), and headed straight for their respective bunks after a series of goodnights.

Sylvain was halfway to sleep when a high-pitched, indecipherable noise came from Annette and Mercedes’ bunk, causing everyone to stir. 

“Are you okay, Annette?” Dedue asked, pulling back the curtain to his bunk, just below the girls, turning on the overhead light and rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Annette pulled back her own curtain, waving her phone in the air and moving so that she and Mercedes sat at the edge of the mattress. “Everyone up! Now!” she playfully demanded, turning on their own overhead light. “We got a review in _Pitchfork_ _!”_

With that announcement, everyone who was trying to ignore Annette and go back to sleep, including Sylvain, could no longer do so, all of them now facing each other, sitting at the edge of their bunks, most of them with the lights turned on. They were all tremendously awake, suddenly, and the nervous anticipation they all shared was tangible.

“Well, what are you waiting for, Annie? Read it!” Ingrid called out from below Sylvain and Hilda, directly across from Annette. 

“Okay. I’m so nervous. It says the reviewer was at our show last night in New York, so this isn’t just an album review.” She grabbed Mercedes’ hand, like she was waiting on a prognosis (which she almost was), and swallowed as if pushing down her anxieties before reading. 

“Coming from the Jersey shore, MIDKNIGHT (oh, that’s us!) is an indie rock basement-folk-pop-punk band (is that what we’re called?) that is somehow both familiarly generic”-- Annette’s eyebrows furrowed-- “and refreshing... in its blending of suburban angst and world-weary optimism.” Her face relaxed in relief, and so did everyone else in the room. “That’s good, right?

“Their sixteen-track sophomore album, released last month and titled _Snapped String Blues,_ is a routinely adolescent and yet surprisingly profound and compelling thesis on some of the classic pop-punk themes of heartbreak, sex, drugs, friendship, failure, and coming-of age, but also on topics like murder, capitalism, homophobia, and demonic possession. The album features a heavy load of medieval imagery and themes, citing the band’s name, and is seemingly written from the perspective not just of themselves but of knights, princes, corrupted priests, and vengeful ghosts.”

“I’m glad someone finally noticed,” Felix added, as so many people liked to ask them what some of their more outlandish songs were about, and which among them had which experiences, but this reviewer seemed to understand both their creative genius and that none of them had ever been murdered in a forest. 

“MIDKNIGHT makes masterful use of their instruments, which include not only the standard strings and percussion of any rock group but a violin that makes the atmosphere of each song and sets their sound apart from their contemporaries. (Felix, this is you!) Each song is unique to the previous one, certain songs emphasizing strings while others allow the drums to take the spotlight, but they are all united by the vulnerability and quirky self-deprecation demonstrated by not only the lyrics and vocals but the precision and timing of the instrumentals. The album is also unified by the impassioned and charmingly boyish lead vocals (Oh, oh, Sylvain, listen!) which give life to the lyrics, which are credited to every member of the band as well as a few others, and blend well with the secondary vocals (Oh my god, that’s me, that’s me!)”-- Annette paused and wagged her and Mercedes’ still conjoined hands-- “which are aggressively feminine and stunningly energetic. 

“While _Snapped String Blues_ is full of strong songs, it is overall not very cohesive. MIDKNIGHT seems to enjoy playing with their genres. Certain tracks put emphasis on the folk in folk punk, with fast-moving acoustic guitar and discordant vocals, while others discard the folk label all together in favor of a pop-punk sound, though never losing the violin. Some songs sound out of place entirely like track three, “Dancing with Her Demon”, which follows a more orchestral chamber pop sound and is basically a four-minute autopsy of intoxicated sex. This experimenting with genre, while it weakens the album somewhat, shows great potential for MIDKNIGHT; from here, they could go anywhere. The best tracks on the album are “Falling from Hell”, which starts the album on a high note, “Cedar”, and “People Person”.

“Besides the album, I was also given the pleasure of seeing them on the first night of their first ever tour, when they stopped in Brooklyn just a few nights after I began writing this review. I was prepared to be disappointed, as I often am with new, promising bands who turn out to be alarmingly mediocre when live, but MIDKNIGHT gave me yet another pleasant surprise. They maintained all the energy the album promised even through the end of the set, and the chemistry between the members, even with few words spoken throughout the performance, made them a joy to watch. Most notable is…” Annette stumbled midway through the sentence, emitting an airy laugh, looking up at Sylvain, “the chemistry between the lead vocalist and the violinist, who were unable to step away from each other or stop looking at each other for reassurance every other minute.” Sylvain could feel himself blushing, unaware that his reliance on Felix’s presence throughout the show was that obvious, or that Felix had been doing the same thing, too. Felix let out a nervous laugh and looked away from Sylvain, his hand scratching the back of his neck as if to say ‘I’m not admitting to anything.’ 

“The somewhat juvenile nature of MIDKNIGHT’s music bothers me less now that I have seen the band in person- I wouldn’t expect much more maturity from a group whose members can’t be older than twenty-five. If anything, I am impressed with their ability to accept their naivete and use it to their advantage. Regrettably, I had not listened to the rest of their discography besides _Snapped String Blues_ at the time of the show, and therefore missed some of the nuance in certain songs, most notably their impressive closer, but overall, I am glad I didn’t miss MIDKNIGHT when they came to town. I would have bought a t-shirt if they had my size.

“And then… it says… Snapped String Blues gets an eight out of ten!” Annette squealed, and let her phone fall on the mattress, finally releasing Mercedes’ hand to wave her two fists forward and back in the air. 

“I think that’s a pretty fucking good review, no?” Dimitri said, chuckling in disbelief, as everyone else sat in virtually stunned silence. Yes, Dimitri. That was a fucking _killer_ review. It calmed Sylvain’s fears from earlier about whether or not they or their demographic were too juvenile; according to this critic, they were, but it was to be embraced, not feared. 

Suddenly, from the silence, Ingrid shouted “We got a B!”, and within seconds, the entire bus was filled with chants of “We got a B! We got a B!”, which Sylvain was pretty sure his father would die (again) if he heard his son celebrating a B. But this was a B on a test that most people aren’t even good enough to take, that so many fail, and now _the entire music world_ had seen them get a B, a score that could have been perfect, maybe, if only Sylvain hadn’t fucking written track three. 

In the midst of their impromptu celebration in their little corridor, Felix reached across the little aisle of air to grab Sylvain on the shoulder, as if he would’ve hugged him if they weren’t twelve feet in the air, or maybe that was wishful thinking. “We did it, man,” Felix asserted triumphantly, “and you’re the star of the show.”

“Oh, come on, I’m not the star,” Sylvain said, waving his hand in front of his face. “I don’t wanna be that singer that thinks he’s better than the band.”

“Good answer.” And they both laughed, and held their glances for a moment before looking away, still smiling, like they were both at the same moment remembering what the critic said about their ‘chemistry’ and were worried some stenographer or paparazzi was secretly watching and making note of every time their gazes lingered. 

Annette sent the article to everyone, and they all pulled it up, reading and re-reading and sending it to everyone they knew. After the initial excitement started to ebb, once everyone remembered how exhausted and vaguely pungent they were, they turned off the lights, re-drew the curtains, and gave each other another series of goodnights, these more elated, punctuated by giggles, even from Felix. 

Sylvain turned to face the wall, and within moments felt Hilda press herself against his back, whispering one last goodnight and giving him a hasty kiss on the temple that he prayed nobody else could hear. She stayed pressed against him, basically spooning him if not for the lack of her arms around his waist, which they had done before, and it never failed to make him feel like a child. But in that moment, in the darkness and the cool, moist air of the bus, listening to Dimitri already start to snore, her steady breathing acted as a noise machine, her body heat a blanket. Sylvain relaxed into the position, and within minutes began to give in to his exhaustion, not caring in those precious seconds before sleep what might come in the morning. 

* * *

That morning was nearly indistinguishable from the previous, besides the fact that everyone was less hungover, but still sweaty, still subsisting on bagels, still desperately trying to cling to the last bits of morning before having to acknowledge that it was the next day and there were things to be done. Luckily, this exhausted morning was not the prelude to any night’s show; they were making the two hour drive from New Haven to Boston, but would be relaxing and seeing the city for the rest of the day, and the show would be tomorrow. They wouldn’t have two shows in a row again until the very end of the tour, largely due to the fact that their drives between cities were going to be much longer after Boston. As they realized how exhausted the back-to-back shows, combined with the long drives and late night, were making them, they all agreed that giving themselves rest days was definitely the right decision. 

Annette offered to make this drive, once again, but this time, nobody could think of a good excuse fast enough, and Dimitri had to gently break the news to her that Annette would not be allowed to drive the bus, seeing as she could barely handle driving her little sedan. She seemed disappointed, but understanding, and in the end, Mercedes had agreed to drive, since she wasn’t quite as exhausted as everyone else, and probably (though she wouldn’t admit it) needed some time away from all the noise and chaos provided by her friends. 

The entire drive to Boston was spent discussing what they wanted to do that night, whether they wanted to go all out or spend it quietly, what they wanted to eat, if they should check out the venue tonight just to see it, and everything else they could think of to get the most out of their rest day. Felix, who had taken a break from reading, seemed excited to see Boston for what he said would be the first time in a few years. Sylvain supposed he was also nervous, getting to see Boston as ‘his’ city for the first time, like the next two days were a test run for the next few years. Sylvain wondered if Felix might be able to point out where he would be living, or if they would pass any of the schools he’d mentioned. He wasn’t sure whether seeing those would make him feel better or worse about the situation.

Mercedes eventually guided them to a rest stop that had showers for them to rent, and they stayed there for a while, everyone coming in and out like a rotating door, most of them also going into the associated convenience store to get more beer, soda, snacks, extra deodorant, and a few disappointing pre-packed deli sandwiches. 

“I miss Wawa,” Ingrid had whined as she gave up on trying to eat a ham sandwich on sad-looking rye. 

“Wawa doesn’t have showers,” Sylvain reminded her. She opened her mouth as if to respond, but went quiet again, and Sylvain could guess that she was about to say she would rather have a cheddar-stuffed pretzel than a shower. 

Feeling clean for the first time in days, and relieved to have no real agenda for the night besides enjoying it, everyone was in a light, eager mood, buzzing around each other once they alighted the bus after parking in an overnight lot that cost way too much. It was still the early afternoon, somehow, so they decided to get lunch (real lunch, not gas station wraps) at an outdoor cafe, the first one they saw; it was a pricey place, but this was their first and probably only chance to be lavish (and have any semblance of personal space) on a tour that had been largely thrifty and cramped. 

It was nice out, unusually hot for Boston but breezy. Sylvain watched the people busily rushing down the street (he had forgotten, in his new Bohemian lifestyle, that today was Monday), observed the people at the tables around them, their crisp clothes and clear, unstressed skin, and as he clinked his flute of mimosa against Hilda’s, laughing haughtily, he imagined that he was someone else. Not a hopeful but insecure musician, not someone with no real life experience, who’d lived in the same Jersey town his entire life; maybe he was a movie star, on a holiday to visit his hometown of Boston in between shoots, or a lawyer celebrating the closing of a case he’d spent the last year on, or a proud graduate fresh out of his master’s program, or the father of that graduate. Maybe Hilda was his wife in this life, or maybe Felix was. _Or maybe I’m alone in this life_ , Sylvain thought. Maybe the lawyer is alone at his table after his work tore his life apart. And then, suddenly imaging himself alone, the table quiet and dark, he came back to himself, to this life, where Ashe was laughing a little too loud at Dimitri’s joke, where Annette’s french toast was getting powdered sugar all over her black shirt, and thanked God for that Jersey town and that he never went to college. _This is good enough._

_No. This is perfect._

They sat outside longer than they’d planned, soaking in the sun and taking proper advantage of the bottomless drinks, stretching the boundaries of what could be called lunch and how much was appropriate to drink with it. But eventually they noticed that the sun was beginning its descent, and they didn’t want to waste the beautiful day sipping away at golden hour, so they left the cafe and began a direction-less walk around the South End. Sylvain noticed somewhere along the way that every city was in essence the same. Where Boston was charming and ancient, New Haven was pretentious and friendly, Brooklyn was loud and eclectic, but they were all full of people trying to find a life amongst each other, whether they had chosen their city or inherited it; they all had parks and memorials and museums and pizza joints and bars and homes and alleys and hospitals, all filled with these same wandering people. 

All buildings in Boston looked virtually the same, columns and ornate friezes and great, square structures of granite, but after they made a left on one street, Felix paused, his face drawing into a thinking expression, before it contorted into a smirk, his eyes scaling the building. 

“This is it,” he called, the rest of the group a few steps ahead of him, most of them not realizing he’d stopped. “New England Conservatory,” and there was a hint of pride in his voice, like he had graduated from it already. 

Sylvain smiled back at Felix, taking in the school’s vast, intimidating exterior, imagining all the creativity that it contained, all the genius, all the ambition, and suddenly was overcome with a sort of sorrowful joy at the thought of Felix becoming part of all that. He worried, watching Felix in the shadow of the building, that he would become stuck here, and MIDKNIGHT would die, prematurely, even more prematurely than it already would be, because their violinist was karmically bound to Boston, and they’d have to refund all their fans’ tickets, and they’d never play again, as a band or as individuals, except Felix, who would become world-famous and forget he was ever in a band. 

But Felix didn’t stay stuck to the pavement, or walk through the front door of the school without even saying a goodbye, or disappear from Sylvain’s vision entirely; he just kept walking, saying how cool it was to see the building after so many years. Sylvain wondered if maybe he had overblown how important the conservatory was to Felix; maybe it wasn’t the religion-like reverence he had made it in his head, maybe it was just a silver lining to the move, something to tether him to Massachusetts the way the rest of his life tethered him to New Jersey. But he was so invested in that book- it had to mean something.

They kept walking, the nine of them like a train in the middle of the sidewalk, barreling through everyone else, Sylvain at the back of the pack with Felix and Hilda on either side of him, Dimitri leading, everyone else staggered throughout, moving with their conversations. They weren’t keeping track of the hours, walking past parks and a million apartments, into and out of novelty shops and music stores, one of which, one of the biggest in Boston, even had their second album in stock, because they had sent them copies of it (as they had with a lot of major stores in major cities) , and they had made a complete fool of themselves with how excited they got, showing off to other patrons and just generally acting like assholes. 

Before too long it was dark, and it was a beautiful night, even without any stars in the sky (Jersey didn’t have any either), but they couldn’t walk much longer; their feet were aching, the breeze was dying and it was growing humid, and Ingrid and Felix were complaining of being hungry again. They settled on a cosy pub a couple blocks away, a place that seemed so quintessentially Boston that it felt like they might walk into it on one street and exit to find themselves on the other side of the city. 

“Everything here is so… Irish-Catholic.” Dedue had remarked around the straw of his soda.

“Sylvain must feel so at home,” Ingrid said, the playful malice in her voice tangible. This was an old joke, for some reason, despite Ashe actually being Irish-Catholic, despite the fact that there was nothing actually funny about someone being Irish-Catholic. He suspected the joke was derived from his hair color, but Annette was sitting right there, completely unscathed by the vicious tongues of Ingrid and Felix and even occasionally Ashe himself. 

They ordered more food than they needed, again, saying they would just split a bunch of the dozens of available starters, but when the starters were gone, also ordered things for themselves. The pub was loud, and lit like patchwork, and every time the door opened _someone_ at the bar would cheer, as if everyone in Boston knew each other, or maybe this place just had a dedicated base of patrons. Above the sounds of the people around him, Sylvain could hear the music that was playing overhead: heavy and meandering, and clearly Irish, or at least Irish inspired, with lots of strings, and Sylvain thought to himself that this is what MIDKNIGHT might have sounded like if they were about a decade older and a few degrees angrier. 

Once they were all soaked through with booze, leftover bites of burger and stray fries, onion rings, nachos, and who knows what else resting on their plates, unable to be eaten (try as they might), they decided to go, start making their way back to the bus. Not in any rush, there was no curfew that night (or any night, really, but especially not that night), but it was nearly midnight, and there was really nowhere else for them to be. 

As soon as they were back on the street, it seemed that the night air, the sheer fact of being outside, which they hadn’t done much of in the last few days, had re-invigorated everyone, even those who had grown tired with their indulgence on beer and food. Annette, profoundly drunk off of three beers, stopped in the middle of their walk on a vacant street corner, and though they thought she was maybe going to throw up, she raised her arms triumphantly in the air, her jacket lifting and her face, red and shiny, scrunched up like she had eaten something sour.

“HELLO, BOSTON!” she shouted, louder than Sylvain had ever heard her shout, like they were on stage or like she was a supervillain coming to take the city hostage. “MIDKNIGHT IS HERE, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” Some people on the sidewalks across the street in both directions turned to see what was going on, and they probably would have thought she was insane if not for the fact that, as of about a minute ago, it actually _was_ midnight. So they probably just thought she was drunk. 

After this, the nine of them transformed from a touring band to a touring circus, embracing the oddity of their reality, especially on that night, hollering and laughing and singing as they began skipping down the street, embracing how drunk they had become not only on beer and whiskey but on Boston’s air, and the knowledge they were nobody’s but each other’s, and just a little bit on the joy of being watched, of embarrassing themselves on purpose. 

With Dimitri still leading, Sylvain wasn’t even sure they were heading the right way anymore, _but to Hell with it all. Why should I be letting a night like this end?_ On nights like these, when he wasn’t even sure he was real, with the improbability of everything, of surviving, he found he was bizarrely pliable, he would let anything happen so long as it kept this feeling alive in him for another hour, another minute. He was, once again, at the back of the group, just behind Felix. At one corner, he had stopped to admire a mural and ended up nearly crossing the wrong street, and Felix had grabbed his hand with both of his, laughing and tugging at his arm. 

“Are you even following me?” 

_Oh, Felix,_ his mind had sobbed, _Felix, you marvelous idiot, don’t you know I would follow you anywhere?_

And in that moment, as he was holding Felix’s hand, standing before an unremarkable street in the most remarkable city, Felix’s genuine, painfully genuine, beautifully lopsided grin the only thing he could bring his eyes to focus on, he had the most painful realization he’d ever had, more painful than his father’s death or when he’d finally understood last year that he would never be anyone but himself:

This was all he had ever wanted. It was Felix, and their hands connected, and Felix smiling at him like people who weren’t Felix smiled at the people they knew. 

Was this the moment he fell in love with Felix, or was this the moment he decided to finally notice it? He couldn’t tell, but either way it hurt, hurt like swallowing glass, and Felix’s hands were suddenly burning hot, so he pulled his own back, nodding and walking along.

“Sorry, let’s keep going,” was all he said, all he could manage to say, not even really sure if he said it from how distant the entire world seemed in that moment. 

Felix didn’t notice the shift in Sylvain, thank fuck, and he’d made sure to not let anyone else notice, either, though he wasn’t able to re-join them in their gamboling, as he was suddenly sober (or maybe still drunk, but sad drunk, which he wasn’t familiar with) and wishing he was back on the bus. 

And soon enough, they were, Dimitri having evidently been leading them in the right direction. Since they were still drunk, nobody wanted to get changed or go to sleep yet, so they draped themselves across the couch and the bottom bunks, and Hilda decided, again, to take the floor. Despite his lovesick sorrow and incessant need to lie down, to reset into the morning and hope he would be normal again tomorrow, Sylvain stayed with them, not wanting a repeat of Saturday. Felix’s presence was at once both repelling him and pulling him in; he wanted to be next to him, on him, in him, with him, but also wished they had left him in front of the conservatory. He was also acutely aware of Hilda; of her body, which Sylvain _was_ next to, and _had_ been on, and in, but also of _her,_ her mind and her sense of humor and her voice and her feelings, the parts of Hilda that made her Hilda, who Sylvain was never sure if he was “with”. 

Sylvain couldn’t be in love with Felix, he knew, or he wouldn’t be sleeping with Hilda, wouldn’t have brought her here, wouldn’t be constantly wondering what their relationship was; if he was in love with Felix, he would have rejected the idea of touching or kissing or holding or fucking anyone else. But part of him knew this was bullshit, that Felix and Hilda were two different people (two very different people, probably about as different as people could get) and he could have a unique relationship to both of them. 

That night, in their bunk, Hilda tried to continue the excitement of the night, laying on top of Sylvain (thank God for that curtain) and trying to joke and tell him a story, but he couldn’t listen, getting lost in his own trail of thoughts, stopping every few yards to mentally apologize to Hilda for, on top of not listening, being unable to give her what she wanted. He didn’t know exactly how Hilda felt about him, how she viewed their relationship, what she expected to come later, but he knew that whatever that was, he would fall short, the way he always had, of everything. 

* * *

They slept in the next day, like, _really_ slept in; after all, they were already here. It was after one by the time they were all awake, so they had to be relatively quick in getting up, and dressed, and finding something to eat (in the end, Ingrid had run out to one of Boston’s seven billion Dunkin' Donuts, gotten two dozen donuts and allowing everyone to indulge, except Felix, who had refused and went across the street to get a protein shake). 

Sylvain, this morning, thought of his realization from the previous night as a fluke. It was a stupid, drunken whim by a stupid, drunken man, known as Drunk Sylvain, who was a completely different person than Real Sylvain, and even Crossed Sylvain. He had let his emotions run away from him, again, and in the romance of the night, he had mistaken his foresighted nostalgia for some deeper feeling, and projected them onto Felix because 1) Felix was standing in front of him and 2) He’d been thinking about Felix a lot, with the upcoming move and everything. Felix was Sylvain’s best friend, and he loved him, he knew that well, but he was not _in_ love with him. It wasn’t romantic. Still, he felt a pull on his heart when Felix talked that morning, but he supposed it was because Drunk Sylvain had planted false notions in his head and screwed everything up for Real Sylvain. 

In the end, they ended up at the venue around the same time as the previous two nights, with ample time to prepare before the show. They discovered that there would be no openers for MIDKNIGHT that night; instead, they were co-headlining the show with another band, which meant the crowd would be a mix between being there for MIDKNIGHT and being there for the other band, which might be not such a bad thing after all, in fact, it could be good for both bands. 

The other band was a seven-piece (it was rare for MIDKNIGHT to meet other small bands with as many members as them), a punk group aggressively named BurntheChurch (no spaces! They had specified) who were apparently also touring for the first time, coming from their home base in South Carolina, and had also played in Brooklyn on Saturday, at another venue. The two bands mingled for a while before the show, and Sylvain discovered that BurntheChurch was just as, if not more eccentric than MIDKNIGHT. Their lead vocalist was a gorgeous brunette who flirted back and forth with Sylvain, though he sensed she didn’t mean it (and neither did he), but Sylvain could tell the leader of the group, the way Dimitri was for MIDKNIGHT, was their bassist, a cold and slightly terrifying, albeit striking and impressive young woman who spoke effectively and didn’t give Sylvain the time of day. 

BurntheChurch was, in short, a punk group, and Sylvain couldn’t really find another word to describe their sound. Their set was loud, and angry, beginning on a high note and maintaining that energy throughout their whole set, never slowing down or turning to a more bare sound for even one bridge. All of MIDKNIGHT was impressed by BurntheChurch (Sylvain could not believe the power of their vocalist) and Ashe made sure to get their contact information from their _incredibly_ intimidating manager, who was probably the closest to a vampire Sylvain had ever seen in real life, so that they could possibly do another show together if they were ever in the same area again.

Sylvain worried that BurnTheChurch’s fervid energy would tire out the crowd, but MIDKNIGHT played to another lively crowd, which seemed to be an even split between people who knew each band but equally receptive to both. Since MIDKNIGHT was still booked to play last, it was pretty late by the time they left the venue, grabbed dinner from the only sushi place still open, and returned to the bus, where they all decided it was best to turn in early, since their longest drive of the entire tour was the next day. They all bid a bittersweet farewell to Boston before they went to sleep, since it was by far everyone’s favorite stop of the tour so far, both for the show(which had gone immensely well, their review in _Pitchfork_ clearly bringing a lot of new attention) and the night before it, which had been the best night everyone had had in a long time, even for Sylvain, who was still suffering from emotional whiplash. Felix made everyone swear that they would all- not just him- be back in the city sooner rather than later, not just to visit him but to play more shows; Sylvain was apparently the only one who was certain MIDKNIGHT wasn’t going to survive much further than the end of the week. 

* * *

Still, they continued on, and the next day, after everyone finally decided the cereal Ashe had forgotten he’d brought would make a decent enough breakfast, they began the long voyage to New York- not back to the city, but to Buffalo, which was at least seven hours away and where nobody could remember exactly why they’d decided to book a show. Due to its ridiculous distance from everything else, Buffalo was actually where they’d be spending more time than any other stop on the tour; they would drive in today, play a show the next night, take another rest day, and finally leave the day after that and head to Pittsburgh. 

They decided to split the drive between Dimitri, Felix, and Ingrid, and Sylvain was beginning to feel like maybe he was in the same boat as Annette, and there was a reason he wasn’t being asked to drive. He hadn’t actually volunteered, which maybe he should have felt guilty for, but everyone else seemed so strangely eager to drive. _Maybe they’re trying to get away from me,_ he thought, but quickly dismissed the notion for being overdramatic. 

Dimitri drove first, and everyone else, lingering again in the living room, decided to watch a movie on the bus’s TV, which had mostly been forgotten until that point. Since none of them knew they’d have a TV, they didn’t think they had any movies to watch in the first place, but Ashe had, in a moment of divine premonition or something, brought a sleeve of random DVDs from home. The DVDs were mostly old children’s movies, but they all decided that a marathon of some millennial favorites could be fun if they passed around Ingrid’s bong a few times first, so they all did that. 

After about 3 hours, in the middle of Willy Wonka (1971), Dimitri got switched out for Ingrid, and Dimitri had to be caught up with what the hell they were doing watching Willy Wonka and why, but he seemed pretty much on board. Sylvain wasn’t really paying attention to the movies, mostly getting distracted by being too high and trying to get the attention of Felix, who was either really enjoying the marathon or not interested in anything Sylvain had to say, or both. 

Still, he hadn’t seen Willy Wonka since he was a kid, and found himself both mesmerized and horrified by it. “Wait, what did Violet do to deserve getting, like, blown up?”

“She ate the gum, she wasn’t supposed to take the gum,” Felix answered.

“It’s just gum, though, she likes gum and he said ‘here’s cool gum’. What was she supposed to do? Does chewing gum mean she deserved to die as a blueberry?”

“I don’t know, ask Willy.”

“How do you guys think Mr. Wonka would kill you?” Hilda asked the room, getting no answers but a chorus of laughs at the concept. 

After stopping for gas, fast food, and to stretch their legs in the late afternoon, they got back on the road, and Felix decided to let Ingrid stop driving and to take the wheel for the rest of the drive. Sylvain realized once they were back on the bus, him still in the living room and Felix now ten yards away in the driver’s seat, that the two of them hadn’t been apart (besides to sleep, and the bathroom, obviously) in days, the longest they’d managed that kind of closeness in years, and he missed him, as stupid as it sounded. He thought about heading to the front of the bus, hanging out just the two of them with views of upstate New York to keep them company, but Felix needed to focus and probably didn’t want to deal with Sylvain anyway. He wasn’t sure why he missed Felix so intensely, considering they had just been together and Felix had barely spoken the entire time, but there was something about Felix’s presence, his energy that Sylvain found so easy to grow used to. He thought back to Boston, to his drunken revelation, but tried to shake it off. Confusing his feelings for Felix (which were strong, he would admit that, stronger than his feelings for anyone or anything else) for love, at least romantic love, would do him no favors. Felix saw Sylvain as his band's vocalist, his childhood friend, and according to Felix, his best friend, though Sylvain suspected that was a lie to placate him. He wouldn't see him as anything more, so Sylvain didn't, either. And besides, he was leaving. Soon.

They reached Buffalo in the evening, after dealing with more traffic than they expected, and decided it wasn’t worth it to get off the bus and start looking around Buffalo. It was late enough that they could justify keeping their pajamas on (they’d shower tomorrow) and finishing their movie marathon while eating a dinner of leftover fast food and random snacks they foraged from all over the bus. If Monday night in Boston was the most fun they’d had on tour so far, Wednesday night in a parking lot in Buffalo was the coziest, the most indulgent, the first that Sylvain felt he could close his eyes and fall asleep right there on the couch, surrounded by the sounds of _Back to the Future II_ and everyone’s idle chatter. 

* * *

Thursday night’s show in Buffalo went better than anyone expected; they were admittedly ignorant of what kinds of people lived there, what kind of crowd they would be able to bring in, but they were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the turnout looked largely like the ones they had seen before. Their opening acts were pretty mismatched, both to MIDKNIGHT and each other, being one trio of older men with acoustic guitars and lyrics about their ex-wives and one duo of two college-aged girls with synth keyboards and a decent amount of acid in their inventory, which they tried and almost succeeded to sell to Sylvain and Hilda. Still, their audience seemed to enjoy them, even if ironically, and Buffalo, being the smallest city they’d been booked for, gave them some much needed hospitality. 

This was the first night of the tour Sylvain had decided to stick around a bit after the show and talk to some of the crowd who had decided to linger around the venue, since they had nowhere to be the next morning, for once. He was surprised to find how many of them were actual fans of the band, the kinds of people who bought their t-shirts not just to collect, but specifically to demonstrate that they had seen MIDKNIGHT. Some of them were girls his age or younger, who seemed overly excited to talk to him (I’m just Sylvain, he tried to explain to them) and some of whom tried to flirt with him, and some of them were men his age, who seemed eager to prove themselves to be cooler, to know more than him, but the most surprising group were the ones who were older than him, by years or decades; they were also his favorite to talk to, as they had no agenda or anything to gain from him, and just wanted to talk about music. These interactions also reassured him that he wasn’t as juvenile as he feared or the Pitchfork reviewer had said, that his music was actually worth something outside of being fodder for the angsts of his peers. 

* * *

That night, as everyone got back on the bus, Hilda stopped Sylvain before he could ascend the stairs, pulled him to the side of the bus, and after making sure everyone else was out of sight, pulled him down to her height and kissed him, squeezing his cheek with one hand, the other thrown around his shoulders. 

She giggled when she pulled away. “I’ve been wanting to do that all week.”

“Why now, then?”

“I don’t know. Whatever happens in Buffalo, stays in Buffalo, maybe?”

He laughed but said nothing. 

“You’ve been so amazing on stage every night, I’m so proud of you. And it makes me want you so, so, bad, it’s too bad we can’t ditch and get a hotel for the night or something.”

Sylvain did his best not to seem too put off by her suggestion- he wasn’t sure why he found her so appealing when they were truly alone, so much so that he wouldn’t have been likely unable to resist her had they been home, yet lost his desire when everyone else came into the scene. After all, there was no real reason for them to hide their relationship(?) from their friends- neither of them were involved with anyone else, and there was no conflict of interest. Was he ashamed of her? It seemed unlikely- Hilda was undeniably beautiful, and they got along frighteningly well, and every other aspect of their relationship was on public display (he had brought her here, after all). His primary fear of anyone finding out was mostly related to Felix, his need for Felix to approve of him, to see him as something better than he was.

“We’ll have plenty of time when we get home,” he promised, and he was probably telling the truth; he knew that after he said goodbye to Felix, he would probably be unable to stop fucking Hilda, just to have something to distract him and someone to take out his feelings on, even if it was with sex and not venting or something else healthy. He felt bad, knowing this was his motivation, but figured Hilda wouldn’t mind even if she knew- if she wanted him, she would get him, it wasn’t like they had ever focused on romance or mutual respect. They were friends with benefits, no strings attached, they both knew it. 

“I hope I can wait that long,” Hilda said, winking, and headed inside, where Sylvain followed her, to their shared bunk, to another night of both of them hoping the other would fall asleep before they could overthink their closeness, each of them for different reasons. 

* * *

Buffalo proved not to be the best place for a rest day, being Buffalo and everything, and they had nearly decided to follow Ingrid’s suggestion to skip the day and go to Pittsburgh early, but they realized it would probably be harder to find parking in Pittsburgh for two consecutive nights, so they stayed in Buffalo and tried to not be bored after so many days of excitement. 

“Trying not to be bored” consisted mostly of day-drinking and making a lot of trips to the convenience store a few minutes’ away from their parking spot to get more alcohol, or more paper towels, after Annette had spilled an entire bottle of wine, or the bag of Hi-chews that Hilda had threatened Ashe’s life over. 

Sylvain figured they weren’t giving Buffalo a good enough chance to be fun, and that there had to be a reason it was a city people lived in, but he didn’t have the energy to be group leader that day, so he just conceded to having another lazy day, grateful that they had taken as much advantage of Boston as they could if this was what their other rest day was going to look like. 

* * *

Arriving in Pittsburgh the next day after a several hour drive, pulled off by Dedue, the only one who wasn’t at least a little hungover, Sylvain realized it had officially been a week since they had left Jersey, a week on tour, a week living on a bus. It felt simultaneously like it had been so much shorter and so much longer; while the tour was going quickly, considering how much build up and preparation there had been, so much had happened, more excitement and change than the previous twenty-three years of Sylvain’s life. And after a week, Sylvain’s back was starting to feel the lingering effects of sleeping in a tiny bunk with another person- Dedue was right, they were more comfortable than they looked, but Sylvain was old and tall and was maybe not meant to rough it like this.

Sylvain lamented this fact to Felix when the two of them were at the venue that night, waiting for their cue to take the stage. He was worried his back, in the middle of a song, would ache or seize, the way it sometimes did when he was sore, and he would screw up a guitar chord or have to stop singing to gasp in pain- he could deal with a dull ache, but he refused to ruin what had so far been a perfect run of a tour, with no mistakes or interruptions.

“Is it in your shoulders, or?” Felix asked.

“My shoulders, yeah, but also my lower back, it’s kind of-”

“Turn around.” Before Sylvain could question the command, he was obeying it, and Felix’s hands were kneading his achy muscles with hands that had grown strong and dextrous from years of violin. “I don’t remember how I learned to do this, but I know I’m good at it.”

Felix was right. He was good at it. After just a minute of Felix massaging his back, not only was Sylvain’s shoulder pain basically gone, but his brain had gone fuzzy with pleasure and his entire torso was flooded with a warm buzz. He couldn’t believe that this divine feeling, this quiet, physical kindness was coming from Felix, who was so characteristically cold and resistant to showing affection. But that was what made Felix who he was, Sylvain supposed; he would never tell you he loves you, never open his arms for you to walk in to, but he would give you his hands when you need them, would show up to your lonely apartment at ten p.m. on a Tuesday with a bag of fast food and the guitar cleaner you never even told him you needed.

“Better?” Felix asked, stepping around Sylvain so that they faced each other, and looking at him in the shadows of backstage, at his eyes that reflected all flecks of light and reluctant smile that always revealed itself by quirking up on the same side, feeling his fingerprints on his shoulders, Sylvain knew that he had been lying to himself since Boston and realized, for the final, most crushing time that he was and always had been in love with Felix. 

“Yeah. Thanks,” Sylvain muttered, his voice barely escaping his lips, if it did at all; all Sylvain could hear was the blood rushing through his skull and, distantly, the shouts and babbles of the crowd. 

Pittsburgh’s show was the first of its kind; where every set before it was inexplicably fast, so much so that he couldn’t recall a single one beyond its very first and last moments, that night’s went by painfully slow, like he was re-learning how to sing, how to play his guitar, how to stand in front of the crowd and let them listen. Felix stood not a foot away, as he did every night, as had been established without a word in Brooklyn, but now, he was a distraction, a car crash Sylvain knew he had to look away from or he would veer off the road and become one himself. The lyrics of the songs he sang, many of which he wrote himself, suddenly sounded like bullshit to him, like pulp and fluff and trite compared to what he wanted to say now, the violent tenderness and gentle rage rising in him with every minute. 

At the end of the set, after Sylvain had shifted from shock to craving to rage to acceptance to defeat and back, finally, to craving, it was the final chorus of their last song, when he and Annette were ricocheting off of each other’s desperate vocals. He knew what they were supposed to do, their little unplanned-but-now-routine drama which had them end each show reading each other’s face, but he didn’t turn to Annette. He turned instead, to Felix, and as the song came to its close, Sylvain giving his final shout and watching Felix lower his violin and bow after his final strike, he took a step forward, closing the gap between them, and kissed him, knowing it was a bad idea. Hundreds of people, their close friends and total strangers and Hilda, poor Hilda, were watching, and nearly all of them dropped deadly silent as the kiss stretched for seconds that felt like hours and Felix and Sylvain’s hands came up to hold each other’s faces.

It was reckless, it was the stupidest thing Sylvain had ever done, which spoke for a lot, and yet it was amazing, the greatest moment of his ridiculous little life, until it wasn’t, and Felix pulled away. The crowd started cheering, louder than Sylvain had ever heard them cheer; this might have been celebration, like they had been waiting for or expecting this plot twist, it might have been a sign that, for all its dawdling, this had been their best show yet, or it might have been an illusion, the roar of the crowd exaggerated by Felix’s total silence. 

Felix’s face was unreadable for a lifetime of a second before it pulled itself into a glare, and then it was gone, and Felix was running backstage, and everyone was following him, and Sylvain was alone on stage. He looked at the crowd, still shouting, ecstatic, like they had no idea the gravity of what they’d just seen. He hesitated, but ultimately said nothing before he ran backstage, his vision a blur. 

Felix stood, his face in one hand, back turned to Sylvain. “Felix, I-”

“What is wrong with you?” Felix cried, spinning around, the emotion on his face one Sylvain had never seen before, at least not on Felix. Sylvain’s heart, if it wasn’t already broken, certainly was, now, realizing that Felix wasn’t just angry, but truly furious, and worst of all, it looked like he was crying. Sylvain had done damage before, surely, but nothing like this. He had never damaged something this precious before. 

“Felix, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“I just don’t understand. Why?” 

He had no answer. _Because I love you, and I need you, but I’m an idiot, I’m an asshole, and I have professional training in messing up the only good things in my life. Because I’ve waited twenty three years to do that and I’m greedy. I’m impatient. I’m selfish._

Everyone was silent for a minute that felt like an eternity. Sylvain refused to look at anyone but Felix, between whom and the floor Sylvain’s vision flickered, not wanting to know that everyone else in the room, everyone he cared about thought, no, knew he was an asshole now too. He didn’t even want to think about Hilda. 

“Are you- are you trying to _humiliate_ me?”

“No, Felix, of course not, this is all-”

“Well, you did.” Matter-of-fact. There was no room to argue here. There was barely room to apologize. Sylvain had fucked up. Majorly. He had no idea this would happen, no idea his split-second decision (if it could even be called a decision and not an impulse, a reflex) could shatter everything he had been so careful to protect. But really, somewhere deeper within him, he saw this coming; he ruined everything, why should Felix be any different? Because they had known each other so long? The longevity of their relationship didn’t shield it from Sylvain's destruction; it just meant the eventual explosion would be messier, would take more casualties, and this looked like it might just be it. 

“Just because I trusted you enough to tell you doesn’t mean you can do shit like this, Sylvain.” Felix’s tone was almost a whisper, like he was trying to keep a secret, even now, but Sylvain wasn’t even sure what Felix was talking about when he said he told him- they had told each other a lot of things over the years. “Just because you know I'm gay doesn’t mean you can use it against me like this.” 

That hadn’t even occurred to Sylvain, and suddenly he understood why Felix was so upset, not just upset but humiliated, betrayed. He wished he could join his friends in being pissed at him, at giving him the silent treatment, but he was Sylvain, as much as he hated that, and all he could do was accept that he’d done something degrees worse than he knew and wait to stop desperately wanting to open his skin. 

“But now everyone knows. So, thanks! I’m coming out, I guess! I’m fucking gay!” Felix was shouting by the time he was at the venue’s back door and storming out of it. Sylvain knew there would be no real repercussions to the rest of the band knowing; Ashe and Dedue had been together for years, Ingrid had come out in high school, and he was pretty sure Dimitri and Annette had both casually revealed themselves as bi at some point. Sylvain knew Felix knew this, too, considering Felix being trans was such a non-issue for everyone that it was basically ignored wherever it could be, but he also knew that it wasn’t about the potential for backlash Felix was upset about. Felix wasn’t ready, for whatever reason, maybe the same reason Sylvain wasn’t ready to be out as bi, either, and he had just made sure Felix never would be. 

“We’ll talk to him,” Mercedes said, leaving out the same door Felix had, and everyone followed in silence, reassuring Sylvain that “we’ll talk to him” also meant “we don’t want to talk to you.” On her way out, Hilda came up behind Sylvain and hugged his arm, ever-so-briefly, giving him a reassuring but clearly hurt smile. Sylvain was breaking his record for the number of fatalities- of hearts, of relationships- in one day, it seemed. 

With everyone gone, it was up to Sylvain to take down their set and load their equipment into the bus, which took too much time with one person, at least enough time for Sylvain’s self loathing to spiral so far out of control that in between packing Ingrid’s bass and Dedue’s drums he sat, outside on the pavement, and sobbed, thinking of Felix and his pain and how he’d caused it. It was another beautiful night- the air was still and cool, and though there were no stars in Pittsburgh, from the back of the venue he could see some of the most beautiful streets the city had to offer, and he thought of how he and Felix should have been enjoying it, drinking in the navy blue sky, together, and he took another deep breath and cried, and cried. 

By the time Sylvain was back on the bus, everyone was sleeping, or at least silent, which he was thankful for, and he decided to spend the night on the couch so as not to disturb anyone on his way in. He was still in his clothes from the show, but was too exhausted and defeated to change, so he laid down, in the dark, in his jeans, and hoped he would be someone else, someone worthy of absolution, come morning.

It wasn’t five minutes past before Sylvain heard someone moving, someone coming towards him, and it wasn’t until she was standing directly over him, moon beams falling on her through the open window, that he realized it was Hilda, her hair messy and falling all around her, her face soft with sleepiness and untouched by makeup. He rarely saw her like this, so new-looking and vulnerable, but he liked it- she seemed more honest, somehow, in a t-shirt several sizes too big (it might have been his, actually). 

“I’m sorry you had a bad night,” she cooed, sitting next to him, taking his face gently in her palms. 

“I’m such a piece of shit. I can’t believe I fucked up this badly,” he said, letting his head rest in her hands, the touch reassuring, somehow, that he wasn’t repulsive or poisoned to the touch. “I understand if everyone hates me now.” He was being dramatic, again, and he knew it; he knew not all of them hated him, that most of them had at some point forgiven him for worse, but he knew Felix probably wouldn’t, and to Sylvain, Felix was as good as “everybody”. 

“We don’t hate you,” Hilda said, with a playful laugh, like it was a ridiculous conclusion to reach and not a simple observation based on the events of the night, which gave everyone a pretty good reason to hate him, or at least to act like they did, to believe they did.

“No?” It occurred to Sylvain that she actually did know better than he did, considering she had been inside with everyone while he was still in the venue after the show, and they were probably all talking, probably about Sylvain and what he had done. While that realization, that they had probably been talking about it, terrified Sylvain, if Hilda was telling him it wasn’t as bad as he thought, she might just be telling the truth. 

“No. At least, I don’t hate you, I know that.” Her gaze was soft, but Sylvain could feel it reading beyond his own, piercing his skull, looking into his psyche, imploring him to give her all his fears and let her solve all his troubles. He never had any idea how Hilda could always do that, make him feel so safe and seen without so much as a word about it; it dawned on him then that maybe that was the one thing Felix and Hilda had in common- you loved for them for their exterior selves, Hilda bubbly and brash where Felix was earnest and prickly, and then quietly, somewhere along the way, they cast their spell over you. “I really, really like you, Sly.”

Before he could ask her to elaborate further, either on why she liked him (he found himself wondering this about everyone he knew, pretty much constantly) or how she knew they didn’t hate him, what they had said, what Felix had said specifically, before he could tell her that he was in love with Felix and ask her what to do, they were all over each other, her tongue in his mouth like nothing mattered, like it was the most normal thing in the world. In a way, in the sickest way, it was. Sylvain, at least the version of Sylvain that had existed between high school graduation and the conception of MIDKNIGHT, had slept with dozens of women; in high school, he had been a serial monogamist, but he eventually switched to just hooking up with whoever gave him the time of day. He was never sure why he did it, besides sexual gratification (which at some point got very old and was not even fun anymore), since every encounter ended with him hating himself and swearing off the habit until he was lonely again and found another scapegoat to take home. He was trying to fill a whole inside him, but every new face made it bigger. Then MIDKNIGHT was born, and took up all his time and mental energy (in a healthy way, for once), and Sylvain hadn’t really had sex in nearly a year. Then things started with Hilda, after a few too many drinks at one of her friend Claude’s parties, and her touch didn’t burn his skin or rot at his teeth, so they continued like this, until now, until this moment which even he knew was another step in a new cycle of self-destruction, the one that had started on stage that night.

Kissing Hilda was nothing like kissing Felix, Sylvain thought, and then thought how strange that was, both that he would make that comparison and that he was even able to in the first place. For one thing, Felix hadn’t used tongue when he kissed back, and even if he had, he surely wouldn’t have used it like Hilda did, drinking in Sylvain like a bottle of moscato. The real difference, though, the difference that mattered, was that Sylvain was not, in any sense, in love with Hilda. Kissing Hilda, touching her, everything they did, was something to do, an escape from the loneliness he felt so often at home, but it was little else. Hilda was, of course, totally stunning, one of the most beautiful girls Sylvain had ever met, and they got on like a molotov cocktail, but their relationship as it stood was more of an inevitability of friendship between two bored, self-destructive tens than a summation of any real attraction. 

But fuck it, right? He had already tried with Felix, in whatever way he did, and it had crashed and burned and shattered in a million pieces they’d all be picking off their skin for possibly years to come, never to be repaired, so why not give Hilda whatever she wanted?

Sylvain knew it was probably a bad idea to have sex on the couch of a second-hand tour bus, considering they would definitely not be the first on that very couch, but they weren’t about to move to the bunk, and there was nowhere to go at what was now almost three in the morning, so he just went with it. 

Hilda was straddled over his lap, his shirt already off and his hands snaking their way up her back under what he was now certain was his t-shirt, when both of them shuddered still from a sudden sound at the mouth of the living room. Hilda let herself fall sideways from his lap, leaning on his left side, and with his vision no longer obscured by her body, Sylvain realized like shattering crystal, like a foot missing its ledge, that Felix was standing in the entryway, watching with half-closed, tired eyes.

Moments passed as Sylvain’s mind shuffled through the hundreds of things he could do or say, but something in him knew that none of them were a real solution or even a real response, and in the end he said nothing, and did nothing, both he and Hilda frozen like unidentified corpses- he couldn’t tell if he was even blinking.

Felix blinked, his eyes flitting between the two of them. “You really are something, Sylvain.” He said it with no emotion, his face showing nothing but exhaustion and vague skepticism, and then turned, walked back into the corridor, and climbed back into bed. 

That was it? ‘You really are something?’ The non-meaning of Felix’s observation confused Sylvain, but the complete monotone with which he said it frightened him. There was nothing, not even anger, and that was an alien notion for Felix, who couldn’t even order a pizza without anger slipping into his voice. If Felix had exploded, and woken up the whole band with his scolding, and kicked Sylvain and Hilda off the bus for the night, it would have been hard, but it would have been expected, and understood. But to hear Felix so deadpan, like he didn’t care at all, signaled to Sylvain a resignation, a doneness with the situation, a doneness with Sylvain. He would have preferred the screaming. 

Obviously, they weren’t going to keep going after the interruption, so Hilda picked herself up from beside him, adjusted his shirt so that it fell straight on her again, and took herself back to bed, whispering an apology, her face flushed and uneasy. 

Alone, again, watching the moon cast light on the empty space before him, Sylvain wondered how he had gone from having everything to having nothing in the span of one night. 

* * *

He drove to Philadelphia the next day. It hadn’t really been his decision- he had woken up late, later than any other day, still on the couch, everyone sitting around him, waiting for him to wake up, and Ashe told him that he had been appointed to drive since he was the only eligible one who hadn’t and that it was punishment for sleeping in. He knew it wasn’t just sleeping in that he was being punished for, but everyone’s anger had seemed to have mellowed out into silent disappointment. This, like Felix’s meaningless comment, was somehow worse than if they were all chewing him out. At least then he would see some way out, in a “nowhere to go but up” kind of way, but now, he felt stuck.

It wasn’t just because of the others’ nomination that he was driving; he had thought last night, when it was clear that nobody would be speaking to him for a bit, that he might end up here. Then, this morning (well, it was really the afternoon when he woke up), when Felix had greeted him with an empty wave and said nothing else that didn’t have to do with breakfast, or important tour information, that he wouldn’t have been able to stomach a day in the living room. 

Driving, though, was lonely, and he wondered how everyone else had been able to deal with the silence and long stretches of road where everything looked the same, but realized that his friends were not as addicted to attention or incapable of being left alone with their thoughts as he was. He almost texted Hilda to ask her to come hang out with him as he drove, but he knew he shouldn’t be distracted (driving a bus was also nearly nothing like driving a car, and though he figured it out, he had no idea why anyone could possibly think this was a good or safe idea) and also knew how that might look to Felix. 

Sylvain wondered what Felix could have possibly thought he was seeing the previous night; did he understand without a word what Sylvain and Hilda’s relationship really was, what it had been for months, that they had just done a masterful job of hiding it? Did he think that his rejection had driven Sylvain into Hilda’s arms for a one-time tryst? Or did he think Sylvain was just stupid and horny and, after failing to get Felix’s pants, had decided to give Hilda a try? He supposed the truth was between options one and two, and that option three was probably the worst possible thing Felix could believe. 

The drive was long, scaling the entire bottom edge of Pennsylvania, and probably would have been split between him and another driver if it wasn’t Sylvain’s day of reckoning. One of the only interactions he had all day was when Annette came to the front to ask him to pull over at the first fast food place they saw after a long stretch of country road, her tone apologetic, face like a sad puppy, like she didn’t want to be or wasn’t really upset with him but only pretending for simplicity’s sake. He had stayed in the bus as the rest of them went in, texting his order to Annette, who brought it to him to eat in the driver’s seat, and seemed hesitant to leave after she handed him the bag; he almost asked her to stay, to sit and eat with him and tell him what they were doing, how much fun they were having without him, but he didn’t. 

Passing through Amish country, its rolling fields and open blue skies, was both the best part of the drive, with its beauty and complete absence of traffic, and the loneliest, and he found himself wanting desperately to pull over, to rest his head on the steering wheel and cry for all his sins and misgivings. He wished for Felix, for his forgiveness, for the ease of conversation and simple touch they’d shared not even 24 hours ago, which seemed so long ago, seemed like an entire person had been born and died and rotted in the time between Felix’s well-meaning shoulder massage and now. When he spotted a field of horses a few hundred feet up, he almost shouted for Felix, so they could slow the bus to a crawl and name all the horses, as they always did. He knew they would name the first one Ingrid, as they always did, and the second one Ingrid II, and the third Ingrid III, and when they realized there were too many to name individually, they would say it was a Galatea family reunion, and Ingrid would loudly object, but laugh, and point out a horse that looked like one she had once trained. Sylvain wondered, like squeezing lemon on a fresh cut, if even in his absence they would spot and christen and celebrate the horses. 

Sylvain’s legs were numb, virtually paralyzed by the time they were parked in Philadelphia, but within a minute, Sylvain was standing, and leaving the bus, and walking the city streets. It was raining, but he didn’t really care; he knew that if he spent another minute on that bus, filled with everyone he loved and everyone who thought he was a complete dick, he would go crazy, and give them a real reason to hate him. He turned street corners and wandered down wet, crowded sidewalks until he found a diner whose neon sign boasted that they were open late and whose wide windows suggested that it was mostly empty.

He stepped in, and he could’ve been anywhere in America (actually, did the rest of the country have diners? Maybe diners, like Wawa, were a secret only Jersey and Pennsylvania shared). The lights were blinding, there were more tables than Sylvain guessed this place had ever had customers, and there was a display case of cheesecakes and linzer tarts that he knew, in an alternate universe, he would have had to order for Annette after she claimed she didn’t want dessert despite all evidence to the contrary. 

Sylvain sat at a narrow booth in the corner, crossed his arms on the table, and cried into the space between, knowing the three other customers and single waitress could hear him but not caring. He was certain, then, that Philadelphia was the loneliest city in the world, and he cursed all of Pennsylvania, from Pittsburgh where he’d ruined everything, through its beautiful country roads, to here, where he felt the echo of his fuckups beating against his ribs, leaving him spitting up blood and rainwater. 

He heard the hollow slap of plastic against the table, and looked up to see the waitress, one hand on her hip, silver coffee pot in the other. The plastic sound had been that of a menu, absurdly long and likely a carbon copy of the menu at every diner Sylvain had ever been to, on top of which laid a single rolled-up place setting, one of the most pathetic things Sylvain had seen in a long time, a symbol of his specific urban American despair. 

“You okay, sugar?” asked the waitress, whose name was Shelly, her face telling Sylvain that she both cared and didn’t care at all, like she knew he was a stranger but maybe had a son her age, like she pitied him for being alone at a diner at ten p.m. on a Sunday but didn’t really care where he’d be going when he left.

“Yeah,” he managed to sigh, wiping snot from his upper lip with the back of his sleeve. “I’m alright.”

“Coffee?” 

“Yes, thank you.” Sylvain watched the coffee pour, hot and syrup-colored, cascading like Wonka’s chocolate waterfall into the generic white mug, thanked Shelly again, and drank the coffee with one sugar packet, as he did. It wasn’t great coffee, but he was just there to have a place to sit, and the taste barely registered to him through the thick fog over his mind. He thought of his friends, and Felix, and the bus; He hadn’t told anyone where he was going, or that he was even leaving. Did they notice he was gone? Did they care? Were they looking for him, calling him just to find that he’d left his phone on the bus? He hadn’t meant to, but it was a fitting mistake, no? He was truly alone. 

Just then, like a pink premonition, Hilda walked through the doors of the diner, smiling in relief when she spotted Sylvain.

“Where the hell did you go?” She slid in next to him at the booth, and Shelly turned around at the end of the diner and started heading back to them. “We were all worried about you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, you should. You can’t just disappear like that. We thought you got abducted or something.” 

“Hilda, I’m 6’1” and I weigh 200 pounds.”

“Coffee?” Shelly sighed when she reached the table. 

“No, thanks, but can I get a large pineapple juice and a stack of french toast with strawberries?” It was the same thing Hilda got at every diner. She turned and looked at Sylvain. “Sylvain, did you order anything?”

“No, I’m-”

“And a grilled chicken sandwich, please, with cheddar, extra onion and no tomato? Fries extra crispy, too. You’re the best, Shelly.”

“Why did you do that?” It was the same thing Sylvain ordered at every diner, too.

“Because I remembered. And you haven’t eaten since, what, four? Maybe if you get something familiar in you you’ll start acting like Sylvain again.”

“Who am I acting like?” For all Hilda knew about him, it seemed she didn’t get him on a fundamental level; causing a scene, pissing everyone off, being dramatic and running away and getting everyone worked up for nothing, while not something he’d done before, at least not in that order, was a very Sylvain move. 

“I don’t know. But _my_ Sylvain would never go somewhere without telling Felix.” She was right- that was the key difference between this and his past theatrics was that before, he would at least let Felix know he was okay, if he could, if he was. And when he wasn’t okay, it was still Felix he would call, who would come get him, wherever he was, and bring him to wherever he needed to be to be okay. 

“Yeah, well, that was before I ruined everything between me and Felix.”

“Sylvain, do you really think you ruined two decades of friendship in one night?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re crazy.”

“I mean that one night involved me kissing him against his will in front of 200 people, practically forcing him out of the closet, and then apologizing by nearly fucking someone else in front of him, so I don’t even blame him.”

Shelly brought over their orders, and Sylvain was suddenly embarrassed that she could hear his business, as if he needed yet another person to think he was a piece of shit.

“I’m sorry,” Hilda sighed, and Sylvain had almost forgotten in his self-loathing that Hilda had been that ‘someone else’. “I should have stopped you, I knew it was a bad idea… but I really wanted it. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Hilda.” It wasn’t. Maybe if he hadn’t been leading her on for months, maybe if he had been honest with her about what was going on, she wouldn’t have gotten the wrong idea. 

They sat in silence for a few minutes, both of them working on their food, Hilda much more enthusiastically than Sylvain, who knew he was hungry but couldn’t bring himself to eat while he knew he was supposed to be punishing himself. 

Hilda took a sip of juice, and then stopped, putting her hands in her lap, and waited, in silence, to be ready to say whatever it was she was going to say. Hilda always did this, always let the silence hang in the air for a moment, growing more threatening like a storm cloud of unspoken words. 

“Why did you kiss Felix?” she finally asked, and Sylvain was unsure if this was better or worse than the other things she could have said (they’re kicking you out of the band, you’ll have to find your own ride home; Felix is in love with Dimitri; I’m in love with you; I’m pregnant). It was a simple question, but it had no simple answers, even if he wanted to lie. 

So he didn’t lie. “I’m in love with him.” It was out there, now, and no matter what he did, Hilda knew, and wouldn’t ever not know. It dawned on Sylvain that Hilda knew the truth of Sylvain and Felix, and as of last night, Felix knew the truth of Sylvain and Hilda, and he was almost relieved. 

“Oh, Sylvain.” She rested her cheek on his arm. “I know.”

“Bullshit. What do you mean you know?”

“I mean, I didn’t _know_ know, but I knew. I think everyone knew.”

Everyone but Sylvain, then. “I only found out this week.” It wasn’t supposed to be funny, but Hilda laughed, so Sylvain laughed, which only made Hilda laugh harder, and then they were both giggling despite themselves, too loudly, loud enough that Shelly looked over from her place behind the counter and winked, seemingly glad to see a shift in Sylvain’s mood from when he came in. 

“I’m glad you know, then. I’m sorry it’s causing so much heartache.” 

“Me too.”

“And I hate to do this now, but, what does this… mean… for…” 

Sylvain really didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to have this conversation now, after today of all days, in this diner of all places, in earshot of Shelly and miles from home. 

“I don’t know, Hilda. I mean the chance of Felix wanting me back is slim to none, but at this point, would you even want to keep sleeping with me anymore after seeing what a mess I am?”

Hilda sighed, her expression resigned, like she knew that this was Sylvain’s way of letting her down easy, of saying that, for as much as he wanted to keep her happy, to keep spending their weekends together for as long as he was free, he couldn’t do it anymore. It would feel tainted, now, to touch her, not because Hilda was dirty or disgraced, but because Sylvain was now a condemned building ready to collapse on anyone who dared to enter. 

“I already knew what a mess you are Sylvain, and I like all those parts of you,” in a tone that broke Sylvain’s heart all over again. Another thing Hilda and Felix had in common: they were collateral damage to Sylvain’s self destruction. “I think we should go. You have someone to talk to.” She ate one last strawberry off her syrup-covered plate and slid out of the booth. 

“He won’t want to talk to me.”

“Sylvain.” She extended one hand. “Let’s go.” He took it.

Their check was twenty dollars; Sylvain left two twenties on the table under a salt shaker and they left. It was still raining, so he gave Hilda her jacket, one last silly moment of their not-quite romance before it would end to no fanfare. 

When they got back to the bus, Felix was standing outside, smoking a cigarette in his pajamas. His hair was down, and like Hilda the night before, it transformed him into a softer, more fragile creature, and Sylvain wondered if this would make it easier to talk to him. Hilda left the two men alone outside, winking at Sylvain as she stepped up into the bus. 

“Hi.” Felix watched Sylvain step next to him, gaze apprehensive but expectant. He wasn’t going to speak until Sylvain said something worthwhile. 

“Could, I, uh, mooch a cigarette off you?” He wanted to be on the same wavelength as Felix, but more than that, he wanted something to do with his hands.

“No. Smoking is bad for you,” Felix said, exhaling a vast current of white smoke. 

“Felix, I don’t know what to say. You know that I would never hurt you on purpose.”

“No, I don’t know that, Sylvain.” Of all things, this is what stung the most- that Felix thought, would ever think that Sylvain would or could ever cause Felix pain through anything other than the grandest fuck-up in the history of Pittsburgh. “Because I don’t know what you were trying to do, otherwise.” 

“I can’t explain it.” He could, but he would have to tell Felix everything, and he wasn’t ready. He didn’t think he would ever be ready, not just to tell him but to be told, with Felix’s characteristically brutal honesty, that he was out of his mind.

“Well, try.” Felix took another drag off the cigarette. “Because otherwise it feels like you were looking to make a fool out of me. And I had to come out because you caught me off guard and I let you kiss me, like an idiot.”

“Felix, you have no idea how sorry I am. I wasn’t thinking of that. I thought, if anything, I was outing myself, I didn’t think it would reflect on you at all.” 

“You’re gay?” Felix almost laughed, like the notion of Playboy Gautier liking men was unbelievable, which maybe it was. 

“I’m bi, I guess. And I’m sorry I took your choice from you. I don’t know how I would feel if I was in your place.” Sylvain wondered if this was what a real apology was supposed to sound like; he had grown up in a house without apologies, and had usually run away from situations where he should have given one. All he could do was be honest- he was sorry, more sorry than he knew he could be. 

“Then why the fuck did you kiss me?”

“It was the heat of the moment.” Technically, this was true- he hadn’t known he was going to do it until it was done. 

“We’ve had a lot of _hot_ moments, Sylvain,” Felix pointed out, probably not meaning to sound as suggestive as he did, putting out the cigarette with the sole of his sneaker on the pavement. “Last night, why did you kiss me?”

“I’ve wanted to for a long time.” Even if he hadn’t realized it until this week. 

Felix was quiet, then, like the moment between the squeeze of a trigger and the bullet tearing through air and cloth and skin, and Sylvain’s heartbeat echoed against the still humidity of the night air. When had it stopped raining?

Felix stepped closer, his gaze steady and unyielding, and leaned upwards to let Sylvain close the distance between them with another kiss, stronger and softer than Felix’s hands on Sylvain’s shoulders from the previous night. It might have lasted seconds, or it might have lasted hours; the parking lot around them was deadly silent, and Felix tasted like salty fries and tobacco smoke. He started to pull away, too quickly, and Sylvain pulled him closer, letting the kiss last another precious second before he breathlessly let Felix go.

“See how much better it is when we both want it?” 

Sylvain’s face shuddered into a smile, but he had been stunned silent. 

“Goodnight, Sylvain.” He leaned up once more, leaving the ghost of another kiss on Sylvain’s jaw. 

“Wait, Felix, I should tell you, about-”

“Hilda told me everything. It’s fine.”

“She did? It is?” Why Hilda hadn’t thought to mention this to Sylvain, he had no idea- it kind of changed everything about the situation, but he guessed there was some method to her madness, some scheme she had cooked up, maybe even with Felix’s help- there was a third thing they had in common. 

“Yes, and yes. We’ll talk tomorrow. I’m tired.”

* * *

Sylvain barely slept that night, his whole body numb with disbelief save his lips, which buzzed with contentedness. Felix had kissed him. The previous morning, Sylvain had thought that Felix would never speak to him again, and that morning, at breakfast, they sat silently by each other’s side, their knees touching under the table. 

Something had changed, for the better, while Sylvain was driving, it seemed. He couldn’t say for sure that everyone had let go of their disappointment in him, and he didn’t expect them to, but that morning felt almost normal, complete with jokes and shitty food and irresponsible decisions with plastic cutlery.

Sylvain knew there was still much to be said, so before their show that night, while the opener was on, Sylvain pulled Felix out of the venue and into the alley behind it. 

“You said we would talk.”

“I did.”

“What did you want to say?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I can wait.”

So he did, and they both waited, listening to the crash of cymbals, for Felix to remember what he wanted to say, but he didn’t.

“Okay, now it’s my turn to ask,” Sylvain started cautiously. “Why did you kiss me?”

Felix scoffed. “Why do you think?” He looked off to the side, like he was waiting for Ingrid to summon him back into the venue and save him from having to finish his thought. “I like you.”

“You _like_ me?”

“Or I love you, or I’m in love with you, or whatever,” Felix stuttered out, his face growing red as Sylvain felt numbness in his digits that spread like a malignancy to his limbs, his torso, stopping his heart and his breath. What had become of everything in the last 48 hours? What a twist this was, that Sylvain had come to his stupid senses just in time for it to actually mean something. It seemed hopelessly unlikely that things could be going this shockingly well after everything had been going so horribly, his heartache twisting itself into a lottery-winning victory in record time. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Sylvain shook his head in disbelief, trying to blink the tears out of his eyes lest he make a fool of himself, again, at this moment on which hinged everything. “Of course it is, Fe. What else would I want to hear?”

“But I’m still mad at you,” Felix insisted, taking a step back. “I forgive you, and I love you, but I’m still mad.”

“Felix, I-”

“I don’t want another apology. I get it. You’re sorry. I need you to show me you mean it.”

“Felix, I love you. I will never stop showing you that.”

“Prove it.” 

Felix didn’t step back as Sylvain came forward to kiss him, again, their third, now, their best by far, in it all the promises they had made and those that were still yet to be made, in it twenty years of waiting, in it the taste of Wawa subs and violin solos and bong resin. 

The kiss broke, but their embrace lingered, Felix’s face buried in the crook of Sylvain’s neck, breathing like he’d been drowning, Sylvain’s arms growing sore from holding Felix as close as he could, testing the limits of how close two people could be before the lines blurred and they shifted into one being, one harmony. He never wanted to let him go. Letting him go would mean losing him, in just a few days now. Sylvain didn’t know what this sudden change in their relationship would mean for the move to Boston, or vice versa, and now that move sounded even more like an insurmountable sorrow than before, which shouldn’t have been possible. Now, he wasn’t just losing his violinist, or his best friend, but the love of his life, which Sylvain was already confident Felix was despite their romance being just seconds old. 

Ingrid’s sudden appearance in the alley and loud whistle broke their death grip on each other. “Excuse me, lovebirds, we’re about to go on.” Ingrid’s nonchalance towards witnessing them made Sylvain wonder if she had seen this coming, if maybe Felix’s feelings, like his own, had been a secret hidden from nobody but himself. She disappeared back into the venue, probably knowing they needed at least another minute together lest their desire cause the stage to collapse.

“Now what?” Felix asked, putting a hand on Sylvain’s cheek, the same place Hilda’s had been just two nights prior. 

“Now I’m yours.”

“Only yours?” His voice held fragility, reluctance, and Sylvain was certain he was referencing the Hilda of it all, which there was no way Felix was as okay with as he was letting on. The fact that he even had to ask made Sylvain feel awful. Did Felix think Sylvain was going to try to keep both of them under his arm? He hoped his view of him wasn’t that tarnished by his old ways. Of course, Hilda would always be important to Sylvain, but in the way that the rest of his friends were, or likely more; in a twisted way, Hilda had been the one to get them together, with the talk she had with Felix. However that had gone, it had somehow both revealed and repaired almost everything.

“Of course, of course.”

They played another perfect show, and in the end, Sylvain obeyed the rational part of his brain, completed his end-of-set ritual with Annette, and resisted the urge to once again kiss Felix in front of everyone, to declare his love (he guessed he would be out to everyone by the end of the night) before the world. But there would be time for that later, and if he played his cards right, there wouldn’t be any running out the clock. 

It was their last real night of tour- tomorrow, they would play a hometown show in Atlantic City, and then it would be over- and everyone was proud, and high-spirited, and a little bit weepy. It was already late, and they had already boarded the bus for the night, but three beers in, Dimitri had suggested one last hurrah, one last city taken by MIDKNIGHT, so they found one of very few bars open for the night (it had not occurred to them that it was a Monday) and made a home for themselves at a huge, round table in the middle of the floor.

They were practically the only ones there (recall that it was Monday), so for a night, they were the kings and queens of The Spinning Sailor. Sylvain sat between Felix and Hilda, realizing that he had been doing precisely that for the last ten days, completely unconsciously. He kissed Felix more times than he could count that night, and grew only drunker off the faux-nauseated reactions of the rest of the group. Sylvain joked that Ashe and Dedue were getting run out of town as MIDKNIGHT’s resident gay couple, but quickly learned that it was too soon to be making jokes like that, both too soon in his and Felix’s relationship (their _relationship. THEIR RELATIONSHIP!!!_ ) and too soon after he had acted like an asshole. 

“Thank you for being so cool about everything,” Sylvain whispered to Hilda when he knew nobody was listening. He knew that bringing Hilda had been a good idea from that first night in Brooklyn, when she had made Mercedes laugh so hard she had barely made it to the bathroom, but he had no idea how much she would affect the emotional trajectory of it all (this tour had become about much more than just music, he knew). He only wished she didn’t sacrifice her own desire to make it all fall into place.

“Sylvain,” she slurred through a thick haze of wine, her wide eyes misty, her smile real but still tinged with sadness. “I just want you to be happy.”

* * *

They crossed into Jersey exhausted and satisfied, excited and yet disconcerted to be home. It had been a long eleven days; Sylvain had never known how long eleven days could feel, how much could happen in less time than he had once, in a bad place, forgotten to take a shower. The final hour on the road, driven by Dimitri, yet again, was spent with all of them huddled around each other, looking at pictures they had taken, pictures their concert goers had taken and put online, reviews both amateur and professional, many of them singing MIDKNIGHT’s praises, even and maybe especially those coming from Pittsburgh. It was hard to believe, after all the time spent planning the tour and dreaming of how it might go, for better or worse, that it was nearly over, and especially that it had been such a resounding success. In the last week, their streaming numbers had nearly doubled, their social media followers following similarly, and Ashe said they were getting emails from other nearby bands asking to work together or tour together or jam together, and one from a record label asking if they were looking to get signed (they weren’t, not now). 

Their hometown show was a beautiful ending to that unbelievable week and a half, the venue full of faces both new and familiar; Felix’s dad had come, and Mercedes’ brother, and coworkers from everyone’s day jobs, and people from high school that Sylvain hadn’t seen in years, a few of whom were Sylvain’s ex girlfriends, made all the worse by the fact that more than one of them had inspired some of the songs in the set. 

After the show, they stuck around the venue for hours, striking up conversations with both their old friends and acquaintances as well as strangers, some of whom were fans or concert junkies and others who simply had nothing else to do on a Tuesday night. Catching up with people from high school went better than Sylvain thought it would, even his exes, to whom he took incredible delight in introducing Felix as not just his violinist, but his boyfriend, which caused them all to scrunch their face up in confusion before nodding politely. 

Eventually, it was just MIDKNIGHT alone together again in their last temporary home. They allowed themselves to cry together, even Felix, even Ingrid, and spent far too long all hugging each other in an incalculable number of permutations. 

“I’ve never been happier,” Annette sobbed into Dedue’s chest, her makeup running and staining his gray t-shirt, and it was such a delightfully ironic moment that Sylvain would have laughed if he wasn’t crying, too. 

Before they took down their equipment for the last time, they asked the venue’s manager if she would take one last picture of them, on stage surrounded by their instruments and each other. The picture didn’t come out perfect; Dedue was blinking and Sylvain’s grip on Felix’s shoulder looked almost deadly, but he was pretty sure it was the greatest photograph of all time. It captured a moment in time that would never exist again, but for that brief flash of time, like a firework, it was perfect. 

“So,” Sylvain started, Felix’s hand in his as they walked back and forth along the west wall of the venue, where they had gone specifically to be alone for a moment. It might have been their last moment alone together for a long time, so Sylvain did his best to capture every detail of it: the dark, starless sky, where the moon hung as a barely visible sliver of light; the crickets’ rhythmic chirping like a metronome; Felix’s hand, steady in his own, which was trembling. “Was your last night in Jersey all you dreamed it would be?”

“Sylvain, I’m not leaving,” Felix said like it was the most obvious thing in the world, stopping in his tracks.

“What?” 

“I just talked to my dad, and I’m not going with him.”

“What? Why?” All of Sylvain’s fears from the last two weeks were washing away like old chalk drawings, and yet he didn’t, he couldn’t believe it. How could it be as simple as this? How could he be allowed this?

“Because I don’t want to. I want to stay here.” 

“What about the Conservatory?” That school, that old building, that testament to the institute of music and the infidelity of human belonging. 

Felix rolled his eyes, his lopsided, goofy grin incredulous. “Fuck the conservatory!”

“What about the book, and all the-”

“Fuck the book too. All it did was prove what I knew already- classical musicians are dicks. I’d rather be in a punk band.” 

“Felix, you can’t.” While Sylvain was happy, happier than he thought he would be to hear that Felix was choosing MIDKNIGHT over the MET, his freedom over his God-given talent, he couldn’t help but feel like he had to do everything to dissuade Felix from this choice, if only to make sure that he was steadfast in his decision to stay. 

“Don’t tell me what to do, shithead.”

“But, Fe, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll find a hotel for a while, or I’ll stay with Dimitri or Dedue and Ashe, or-”

“Move in with me.” It was a ridiculous proposal- they had been dating for hardly a day- but in that moment, in the dark alley and the smell of low tide, it made nothing less than perfect sense. 

“Sylvain, that’s-”

“I don’t care. Nothing about our lives is normal anymore. We just lived on a bus for ten days. Come live with me. We’ll make carbonara every night and we’ll be so loud we’ll make the neighbors hate us.” He didn’t know if he meant sex or band practice, but both would be true.

Felix paused for a minute, his eyes darting back and forth like a goldfish in a plastic bag from a carnival, before he started laughing, the most beautiful song Sylvain had ever written. 

“Okay. Fuck it. I’ll move in.” Felix shrugged, his hands coming up on each side of his head, his smile reflecting the dim light of the moon. 

Sylvain jumped without meaning to, picking up Felix by the waist and gently backing him up against the brick wall behind him, kissing him with more love, more violent, reckless hope than he ever thought possible. 

“You’re staying, you’re really staying,” Sylvain bleated. He had cried more in the last eleven days than he had in the last twenty-three years.

“Sylvain,” Felix purred, his voice laden with affection. Sylvain watched his eyes, half-lidded, grow fonder and hungrier, his mouth curling into a closed, soft smile, one unlike any Felix had ever given him. “How could I ever leave you behind?”


End file.
